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This  book  is  due  at  the  LOUIS  R.  WILSON  LIBRARY  on  the 
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Form  No.  513 

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A  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

1715-1815 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2018  with  funding  from 
University  of  North  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hill 


https://archive.org/details/historyofgermany00atki_0 


HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

1715-1815 


BY 

C.  T.  ATKINSON 

FELLOW  AND  MODERN  HISTORY  LECTURER  OF  EXETER  COLLEGE,  OXFORD 
FORMERLY  DEMY  OF  MAGDALEN  COLLEGE,  OXFORD 


WITH  35  MAPS  AND  PLANS 


PHILADELPHIA 
GEORGE  W.  JACOBS  &  CO. 
PUBLISHERS 


/ 


1  Ci  9  0  7  0 


•s^.Tov^, 

,MEflCANTM.»| 


PREFACE 


nHIS  work  is  the  outcome  of  an  effort  to  produce  within 
moderate  compass  some  account  of  the  affairs  of 
Germany  between  the  Peace  of  Utrecht  and  the  final  over¬ 
throw  of  Napoleon.  In  view  of  the  dimensions  to  which  the 
volume  has  attained  I  can  hardly  claim  to  have  been  success¬ 
ful  in  the  task  of  compression,  but  I  am  more  conscious  of 
shortcomings  in  omitting  things  which  ought  to  have  been 
included  than  of  having  dwelt  at  excessive  length  on  those 
aspects  of  German  history  with  which  I  have  endeavoured  to 
deal.  It  may  indeed  be  urged  that  the  character  of  the 
subject  must  bear  some  share  of  the  responsibility  for  the 
length  to  which  the  book  has  run.  Germany  between  1 715 
and  1815  was  not  a  nation  with  a  well-defined  national  life 
and  history,  but  was  merely  a  chaotic  collection  of  states  with 
conflicting  aims  and  ideals,  constantly  engaged  in  struggles 
with  one  another ;  there  can  be  no  history  of  Germany  as 
a  whole,  because,  as  this  book  endeavours  to  show,  there 
was  hardly  anything  that  could  be  called  “  German  ”  ; 
particularism  and  localism  were  infinitely  stronger  than  any 
unifying  or  centralising  tendencies.  But  one  has  not  merely 
to  follow  the  fortunes  of  the  principal  portions  of  this  infinitely 
subdivided  “  geographical  expression,”  the  struggles  of  these 
various  members  are  so  completely  merged  in  the  international 
history  of  Europe  as  a  whole  that  the  affairs  of  Germany  only’ 
become  intelligible,  if  at  all,  when  narrated  as  part  of  the 
history  of  all  Europe.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that 


vi  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

Russia,  Turkey,  Great  Britain  and  above  all  France  play  more 
prominent  parts  in  German  history  in  these  years  than  do 
some  German  states  of  quite  respectable  size.  Thus  one 
cannot  neglect  battles  fought  outside  Germany  by  the  troops 
of  German  states ;  Marengo  and  Arcis  sur  Aube  are  quite  as 
much  part  of  German  history  as  are  Leuthen  and  Wagram, 
while  the  otherwise  abortive  victories  of  Prince  Charles  Edward 
in  “the  ’45”  helped  to  transfer  Silesia  from  the  Hapsburg 
to  the  Hohenzollern  and  thus  profoundly  affected  the  course 
of  German  affairs  for  over  half  a  century.  Thus,  then,  when 
one  attempts  to  narrate  the  history  of  Germany  from  the 
death  of  Louis  XIV  to  the  overthrow  of  that  other  great  enemy 
of  Germany,  Napoleon,  one  finds  one’s  self  committed  to 
relating  the  course  of  European  affairs  so  far  as  they  took 
place  in  or  immediately  affected  Germany,  a  very  much  more 
lengthy  process  than  that  of  narrating  the  development  of  one 
country  only.  But  it  must  also  be  remembered  that  while 
these  affairs  for  the  most  part  took  the  shape  of  wars  or 
rumours  of  wars,  military  matters  must  be  treated  at  some 
length  if  they  are  to  be  in  the  least  intelligible.  Indeed  I  am 
afraid  that  in  the  effort  to  compress  my  accounts  of  campaigns 
and  battles  I  have  failed  not  only  to  be  succinct  but  even  to 
be  reasonably  clear;  and,  still  worse,  that  I  have  made  state¬ 
ments  which  need  more  expansion  and  justification  than  they 
have  been  given,  and  have  pronounced  verdicts  without  a 
sufficient  setting  forth  of  the  grounds  on  which  I  have  formed 
my  conclusions. 

In  deliberately  choosing  the  military  aspect  of  German 
affairs  as  the  feature  on  which  to  lay  most  emphasis,  I  am 
aware  that  I  have  hardly  touched  upon  the  intellectual  and 
literary  life  of  the  period.  However,  I  have  omitted  this  side 
advisedly,  feeling  convinced  that  it  was  in  the  main  a  thing 
apart,  which  affected  the  life  of  the  country  as  a  whole  but 
little  and  certainly  had  hardly  any  effect  on  the  politics  of 
Germany.  The  “Potsdam  Grenadiers”  are  more  typical  of 


PREFACE 


Vll 


eighteenth-century  Germany  than  are  Goethe  and  his  fellows. 
It  was  only  quite  at  the  end  of  the  period,  in  the  days  of  the 
War  of  Liberation,  that  German  literature  can  be  really  called 
“  German,”  that  it  ceased  to  be  merely  cosmopolitan  and  be¬ 
came  national.  Considerations  of  space  must  be  my  apology 
for  the  inadequate  treatment  of  the  social  state  of  the  country  ; 
when  there  is  so  much  to  be  included  something  must  be  left 
out,  and  in  preferring  to  dwell  on  the  military  history  of  the 
period  I  have  taken  the  aspect  of  the  subject  which  appeals 
to  me  most  and  with  which  I  feel  least  incompetent  to  deal. 

The  appended  lists  of  authorities  do  not  of  course  make 
any  pretensions  to  be  exhaustive  bibliographies  :  the  first  gives 
the  names  of  the  principal  books  from  which  I  have  taken  my 
information,  the  second  of  some  books  to  which  I  would  refer 
any  one  who  wants  more  information  on  particular  points  than 
is  here  given.  Other  references  will  be  found  from  time  to 
time  throughout  the  book  to  other  works  which  I  have 
consulted  less  frequently  or  on  special  points.  Some  books 
(indicated  by  an  asterisk)  which  appear  in  both  lists  have 
been  published  since  the  manuscript  of  the  book  was  first 
completed,  now  some  time  ago,  for  unforeseen  difficulties  have 
caused  considerable  delay  in  the  appearance  of  the  book.  I 
have  thus  not  been  able  to  utilise  several  volumes  which  might 
have  been  very  helpful.  Before  leaving  the  subject  of 
authorities  I  should  like  to  make  special  acknowledgment 
of  my  indebtedness  to  two  works,  Dr.  Ward’s  England  and 
Hanover  and  Mr.  Fisher’s  Napoleonic  Statesmanship  :  Germany , 
the  first  of  which  I  have  found  exceptionally  useful  when  deal¬ 
ing  with  the  attitude,  not  as  a  rule  very  rightly  represented, 
of  England  towards  Germany  in  the  first  half  of  the  period, 
while  Mr.  Fisher’s  book  I  found  peculiarly  illuminating  on 
a  subject  on  which  the  German  authorities  I  had  utilised 
were  copious  rather  than  clear. 

Further,  I  must  plead  guilty  to  what  I  believe  to  be 
generally  looked  upon  as  the  perpetuation  of  a  vulgar  error, 


viii  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


my  adherence  to  the  incorrect  form  “  Hapsburg”  in  preference 
to  “  Habsburg,”  and  my  preference  for  such  forms  as  Cologne, 
Mayence  and  Ratisbon.  Strictly  speaking  they  are  no  doubt 
incorrect,  but  I  prefer  to  use  the  forms  to  which  I  am  ac¬ 
customed. 

Finally,  I  should  have  liked  to  have  included  a  good  many 
more  maps  and  plans,  but  of  such  things  only  a  limited 
number  can  be  inserted,  and  when  the  requisite  things  are  to 
be  found  in  the  Clarendon  Press  Atlas  and  in  M.  Schrader’s 
Atlas  de  Geographic  Historique  it  would  be  merely  superfluous 
to  have  given  such  maps  as  “  the  Development  of  Prussia  ”  ; 
I  have  therefore  preferred  to  increase  the  number  of  plans  of 
battles. 


Oxford,  June  1908 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

GERMANY  IN  1 7 1 5 — THE  EMPIRE  AND  ITS  INSTITUTIONS 

PAGES 

The  Peace  of  Utrecht  as  a  “landmark”  in  German  history — Effects  of  the 
Reformation  and  Thirty  Years’  War  on  Germany  —  Charles  v  and 
Protestantism — The  Peace  of  Westphalia  and  the  constitution — Writings  of 
Chemnitz,  Pufendorf  and  Leibnitz — The  Emperor  and  his  authority — The 
Imperial. Army — The  “  Roman  Month” — The  revenue — The  Circles — The 
Imperial  Chamber — The  Aulic  Council — The  Diet  and  its  Colleges :  of 
Electors,  of  Princes,  of  Free  Cities — Absence  of  unity  and  national  life  in 
Germany — The  Princes  and  Louis  xiv — The  Princes  and  the  Hapsburgs — 
Reasons  for  the  survival  of  the  Empire  .....  1-30 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 

*l  Austria”  and  the  Hapsburgs — The  ex-Spanish  possessions — Hungary — Lack 
of  unity — The  Ecclesiastical  Electors:  Mayence,  Treves,  Cologne — 
Saxony  and  the  Albertine  Wettins — Brandenburg  and  the  Hohenzollern — 

The  Wittelsbachs  in  Bavaria  and  the  Palatinate — The  Guelphs  and  the 
Planoverian  Electorate — The  Ecclesiastical  Princes — Wtirtemberg  :  Das 
gute  alte  Recht — Baden — Hesse-Cassel — Hesse-Darmstadt — The  Wittels- 
bach  branches — The  Franconian  Hohenzollern — The  Ernestine  Saxons — 
Mecklenburg — Schleswig-Holstein  and  its  connection  with  Denmark — - 
Oldenburg — Sweden’s  German  territories — Alsace  :  its  anomalous  position 
— Lorraine — Minor  Princes — The  Imperial  Knights — Condition  ofGermany, 
social  and  economic — Effects  of  the  Thirty  Years’  War  .  .  3I-^3 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  END  OF  THE  NORTHERN  WAR 

The  Coalition  against  Charles  xn — Intervention  of  Frederick  William  1 — 
Russo-Prussian  Alliance — Intervention  of  England  and  Hanover — Losses 
of  Sweden  —  Anglo  -  Russian  quarrel  over  Mecklenburg  —  Death  of 
Charles  xn — Peaces  of  Stockholm  (1719)  and  Nystad  (1721) — Situation 
in  the  Baltic  .......  64-71 


IX 


X 


GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


CHAPTER  IV 

PASSAROWITZ,  SICILY  AND  THE  PRAGMATIC  SANCTION 

PAGES 

Turkish  attack  on  Venetian  possessions — Austria  assists  Venice — Eugene’s 
victories  at  Peterwardein  and  Belgrade — Spain’s  attempts  to  upset  the 
Utrecht  settlement  in  Italy  —  The  Quadruple  Alliance  —  Peaces  of 
Passarowitz  (1718),  of  London  (1720)  —  Policy  of  Charles  vi  —  The 
Austrian  succession  question — The  “Pragmatic  Sanction” — Its  effect  on 
foreign  affairs — Ripperda’s  schemes — The  League  of  Vienna — The  Ostend 
East  India  Company — Congress  of  Soissons — Second  Treaty  of  Vienna 
(1731) — The  Powers  and  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  .  .  .  72-83; 

CHAPTER  V 

PRUSSIA  UNDER  FREDERICK  WILLIAM  I 

Religion  as  a  factor  in  politics — The  persecution  of  the  Salzburgers — Frederick 
William  1  and  his  work  for  Prussia — Economies  and  revenue  reform — ■ 
Constitutional  situation — Judicial  and  social  reforms — The  Prussian  Army  : 
its  increase'7and  improvement — Frederick  William’s  foreign  policy — 

Jiilich  and  Berg  .......  84-96 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  LAST  WARS  OF  CHARLES  VI 

The  Polish  Succession — France  and  Spain  attack  Austria — Walpole’s  neutrality  : 
its  unwisdom — Campaigns  of  1734  and  1735 — Preliminaries  of  Vienna 
— Lorraine  ceded  to  France — Marriage  of  Maria  Theresa  to  Francis 
Stephen  of  Lorraine  —  Death  of  Eugene  —  Charles  vi  joins  Russia 
against  the  Turks — Disastrous  campaigns — The  Peace  of  Belgrade — 
Death  of  Charles  vi.  ......  97-104 


CPIAPTER  VII 

MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  ENEMIES 

Condition  of  Austria  in  1740 — Constitution,  army,  finances — The  Conference 
and  its  members — Possible  claimants:  Saxony,  Bavaria — Attitude  of  “the 
Powers  ” — Frederick  11  of  Prussia  :  his  action  atHerstal — ThePIohenzollern 
“claim”  on  Silesia — Frederick’s  action  discussed — Silesia  invaded — Maria 
Theresa’s  attitude — Campaign  and  battle  of  Mollwitz — Its  great  political 
results — Fleury  and  Belleisle — The  Treaty  of  Nymphenburg — Other  claims 
raised — England’s  advice  to  Maria  Theresa — Policy  of  France  discussed  105-123 

CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR — TO  THE  TREATY  OF  WORMS 

F ranco-Bavarian  invasion  of  Austria — Vienna  in  peril — The  Elector’s  change  of 
plan — Convention  of  Klein  Schellendorf — Loss  of  Prague — Khevenhuller 
invades  Bavaria  :  his  success — Charles  Albert  elected  Emperor — Fred¬ 
erick  11  again  takes  the  field — Unsuccessful  invasion  of  Moravia — Battle  of 


CONTENTS 


xr 


PAGES 

Chotusitz — Peace  of  Berlin — French  besieged  in  Prague — Belleisle’s  escape 
— Death  of  Fleury — Campaign  of  1743:  French  driven  from  Bavaria — 

Fall  of  Walpole — England  and  the  “  Pragmatic  Army  ” — The  march  to  the 
Main — Dettingen — Carteret  and  the  “Project  of  Hanau” — Affairs  in 
Italy — Campo  Santo — Austro-Sardinian  relations — The  Treaty  of  Worms — 

Maria  Theresa’s  policy  discussed — The  Treaty  of  Fontainebleau  .  124-145 

CHAPTER  IX 

THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR — TO  THE  PEACE  OF  AIX-LA-CHAPELLE 

Threatened  invasion  of  England — Saxe  overruns  West  Flanders — Austrian 
invasion  of  Alsace,  checked  by  Frederick’s  intervention — The  Union  of 
Frankfort  and  its  objects — Campaign  of  1744  in  Bavaria  and  Bohemia — 
D’Argenson — Death  of  Charles  vn — Bavaria  retires  from  the  war — French 
plans  of  campaign—  Fontenoy — The  Jacobite  insurrection — Election  of 
Francis  Stephen  as  Emperor — Austrian  invasion  of  Silesia:  checked  at 
Hohenfriedberg — Frederick  in  Bohemia — Battle  of  Sohr — Convention  of 
Hanover — Joint  action  of  Austria  and  Saxony :  Gross  Hennersdorf  and 
Kesselsdorf — Treaty  of  Dresden — Frederick’s  success — Affairs  of  Italy: 
d’Argenson  and  Charles  Emmanuel — Campaigns  in  the  Netherlands :  of 
1746,  1747 — Negotiations  for  peace — Peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle — State  of 
Europe  after  the  Peace — A  mere  truce  ....  146-171 

CHAPTER  X 

MARIA  THERESA’S  REFORMS  AND  THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION 

The  Conference  after  the  war — Maria  Theresa’s  new  ministers :  Kaunitz, 
Haugwitz,  Chotek — Increased  centralisation  and  efficiency — Army  reform 
— Administrative  reform — Financial  and  judicial  reform — The  outlying 
dominions  :  Italy,  the  Netherlands — Maria  Theresa  and  Hungary — Foreign 
policy — Austria  and  her  allies — Kaunitz  proposes  a  change  of  front — Rela¬ 
tions  with  France — Treaty  of  Aranjuez — Anglo-French  conflict — England 
vulnerable  in  Hanover — George  Il’s  preparations  for  defence — Attitude  of 
Frederick  11  :  his  fears  of  an  attack — Convention  of  Westminster — Effect 
of  this  on  France — Negotiations  with  Austria — First  Treaty  of  Versailles — 

Its  importance  and  effects  ......  I72-I93 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR:  CAMPAIGNS  OF  1 756  AND  1757 

Frederick’s  use  of  the  peace — His  expectation  of  attack — The  invasion  of 
Saxony — Saxons  stand  at  Pima — Battle  of  Lobositz — Fall  of  Pima — 
Negotiations  during  the  winter  of  1756-1757 — Sweden,  Russia  and  the 
Empire  support  France  and  Austria — Campaign  of  1757  :  Frederick  invades 
Bohemia — Battle  and  siege  of  Prague — Daun’s  victory  at  Kolin — Prussians 
evacuate  Bohemia — Operations  of  Russians — Affairs  in  Western  Germany  : 
Richelieu’s  advance — Hastenbeck  and  Closter  Seven — Soubise  and  the 
Imperial  Army — Frederick  moves  to  Erfurt — Austrians  invade  Silesia  and 
defeat  Bevern  at  Breslau — Frederick’s  victory  at  Rossbach  and  return  to 
Silesia — Battle  of  Leuthen — Situation  at  end  of  1757  .  •  194-227 


1 


xii  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

CHAPTER  XII 

the  seven  years’  war  ( continued )  :  1758  AND  1759 

PAGES 

Preparations  on  both  sides — England  subsidises  Prussia — Ferdinand  of  Brunswick 
given  command  in  West  Germany — England’s  part  in  the  war — Convention 
of  Closter  Seven  denounced — Ferdinand’s  opening  operations :  French 
driven  behind  the  Rhine — Frederick  recovers  Schweidnitz  and  invades 
Moravia — Siege  of  Olmutz — Loudoun  captures  a  great  convoy — Siege 
raised — Prussian  retreat  into  Bohemia — Russian  advance  calls  off  Frederick 
to  the  Oder — Daun’s  wasted  opportunity — Battle  of  Zorndorf — Frederick 
returns  to  Saxony — Battle  of  Hochkirch — Frederick’s  recovery — Ferdinand’s 
operations :  Crefeld — British  troops  sent  to  help  him — Fall  of  Bernis  : 
Choiseul  succeeds  him — Schemes  for  campaign  of  1759 — Frederick  adopts 
the  defensive — The  Russian  advance — Battle  of  Paltzig — Loudoun  joins 
Russians — Battle  of  Ivunersdorf — Daun  misses  his  chance  of  decisive 
success — Prince  Henry’s  operations — Maxen — Situation  at  close  of  1759 — 
Ferdinand’s  campaign :  Bergen  and  Minden  .  .  .  228-272 

CHAPTER  XIII 

the  seven  years’  war  ( concluded ) 

Battle  of  Landshut — Frederick  assails  Dresden — 'Loudoun  takes  Glatz — Fred¬ 
erick  moves  into  Silesia — Battle  of  Liegnitz — Operations  of  Russians — 

Raid  on  Berlin — Battle  of  Torgau — Ferdinand  in  1760  :  Warburg — Hesse 
lost — Plans  for  1761 — Frederick  at  Bunzelwitz — Loudoun  storms  Schweid¬ 
nitz — Fall  of  Colberg — Western  Germany  in  1761  :  Ferdinand’s  victory 
of  Vellinghausen — Negotiations  for  peace — Intervention  of  Spain — Fall  of 
Pitt — Death  of  Elizabeth  of  Russia — Peter  in  assists  Frederick — Sweden 
retires  from  the  war — Campaign  of  1762 — Frederick  recovers  Schweidnitz 
— Ferdinand’s  successes — Peace  Negotiations — Treaty  of  Hubertsburg — 
Frederick’s  part  in  the  war — France  and  England — Attitude  of  Germany 
to  the  struggle  .......  273-293 


CHAPTER  XIV 

AUSTRIA  AND  PRUSSIA  AFTER  THE  WAR.  THE  PARTITION  OF  POLAND 

Condition  of  Prussia  in  1763 — Remedial  measures — Administrative  reforms — 
Frederick’s  system  of  government — Condition  of  the  Prussian  army — 

Maria  Theresa’s  work  of  reconstruction — The  Council  of  State — Death  of 
Francis  Stephen — Joseph  11 — Ministerial  changes — Joseph  and  the  Empire 
— Affairs  of  Poland — The  succession  question  (1763) — Internal  troubles  — 
Russo-Turkish  war — Danger  of  war  spreading — Partition  suggested  and 
adopted  —  Responsibility  and  justification  —  Austria’s  acquisition  of 
Bukovina — Peace  of  Kainardji  .....  294-309 

CHAPTER  XV 

THE  FOREIGN  TOLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II 

Joseph  now  predominant  in  Austria — The  Bavarian  succession  question — 
Joseph’s  claims  and  proposals — Opposition  of  Charles  of  Zweibriicken 


CONTENTS 


xui 


PAGES 

backed  by  Prussia — The  Bavarian  Succession  War — Peace  of  Tetschen — 
Russia’s  influence  —  Death  of  Maria  Theresa  —  Joseph  supports  Cather¬ 
ine  n’s  Eastern  policy — The  Netherlands  and  the  closing  of  the  Scheldt — 
Joseph  thwarted  by  Vergennes — The  Bavarian  exchange  project — ’Fred¬ 
erick  II  and  the  Fiirstenbund — Death  of  Frederick  n — Joseph  involved  in 
Catherine  n’s  war  against  Turkey — Prussian  intervention  in  Plolland — The 
Triple  Alliance  of  1788 — Eastern  complications — Death  of  Joseph  .  310-327 

CHAPTER  XVI 

MARIA  THERESA  AND  JOSEPH  II — DOMESTIC  AFFAIRS 

Joseph  as  a  reformer — The  Church — Relations  with  the  Papacy — The  fall  of  the 
Jesuits — Education — Toleration — The  Agrarian  question — Opposition  of 
the  nobility — Ministerial  changes — Finances  and  commerce — Joseph  and 
the  Netherlands — Localist  and  clerical  opposition  excited  by  his  reforms — 
Outbreak  of  Belgian  insurrection — The  Belgian  Republic — Joseph  and 
Hungary — Opposition  to  agrarian  reforms — Prospect  of  Prussian  interven¬ 
tion — Reasons  for  Joseph’s  failure  .....  328-346 

CHAPTER  XVII 

LEOPOLD  II  AND  THE  EASTERN  QUESTION 

Accession  of  Leopold  11 — His  experience  in  Tuscany — His  policy — Intrigues  of 
Prussia — Treaty  of  Reichenbach — Conciliation  of  Hungary — The  Belgian 
Republic  suppressed — Condition  of  Austria  under  Leopold — Peace  of 
Sistova  with  Turkey— Better  relations  between  Austria  and  Prussia  .  347~355 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

GERMANY  AND  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Reasons  for  intervention  of  European  powers  in  France — The  emigres  and 
Alsace — Condition  of  Germany,  political  and  intellectual — Little  national 
feeling — Attitude  to  France — The  Illuminati  and  the  Revolution — 
Western  Germany  the  only  district  ready  to  receive  the  propaganda — 

Effect  of  Revolution  on  German  unity — The  German  states  in  1792: 
Bavaria  and  the  Palatinate  ;  Saxony  ;  Hanover  and  Brunswick  AVolfen- 
biittel ;  Hesse-Cassel,  Hesse-Darmstadt,  Mecklenburg ;  Oldenburg  and 
Holstein  ;  Baden,  WUrtemberg  ;  minor  states  ;  the  ecclesiastical  territories  ; 
the  Free  Cities  356-374 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE  FIRST  COALITION 

Leopold  II  and  intervention— The  Declaration  of  Pillnitz— French  hostility  to 
Austria  —  Sudden  death  of  Leopold  —  War  declared  Fiench  invade 
Belgium — Brunswick’s  invasion  of  France  :  Valmy — Belgium  and  Western 
Germany  overrun — Republicanism  on  the  Rhine — Affairs  of  Poland  :  the 
Second  Partition — Campaign  of  1793 :  the  Allies’  opportunity ;  it  is 
missed — Wattignies — Hoche  and  Pichegru  on  the  Rhine  Prussia  s  failure 


xiv  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


PAGES 

to  co-operate — Campaign  of  1794:  Allies  driven  out  of  Belgium  and 
behind  the  Rhine — French  conquer  Holland — Collapse  of  the  Coalition — 
Prussia’s  policy — The  Peace  of  Basel :  can  it  be  justified  ?  .  .  375—395 


CHAPTER  XX 

FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 

Prussia  and  Poland :  the  Third  Partition — The  Empire  and  its  defence — 
Campaign  of  1795:  Clerfayt’s  successes — Campaign  of  1796:  Bonaparte 
in  Italy:  Archduke  Charles  against  Jourdan  and  Moreau  in  South 
Germany — Attitude  of  minor  states — Treaty  of  Pffafifenhofen — Repulse  of 
Jourdan  and  Moreau — Bonaparte’s  victories  and  advance  into  Austria — 
Preliminaries  of  Leoben — “Fructidor” — Treaty  of  Campo  Formio — 
Austria’s  acquisitions  and  losses — Her  internal  condition  :  Francis  II  : 
Thugut  and  his  policy — State  of  Prussia  under  Frederick  William  11 
and  hi — Her  misguided  policy  .....  396-417 

CHAPTER  XXI 

RASTATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION 

Meeting  of  Congress  of  Rastatt — Territorial  “  compensation  ’’and  secularisation 
— Treatment  of  Germany  by  the  Directory — Franco- Austrian  relations — 
French  aggressions  in  Italy — Formation  of  the  Second  Coalition — Prussia’s 
continued  neutrality — Attitude  of  Bavaria — Outbreak  of  war — Operations 
in  Switzerland  and  South  Germany — Archduke  Charles  victorious  at 
Stockach — Events  in  Italy — Dispersion  of  the  Congress :  the  French 
envoys  murdered — First  battle  of  Zurich — Thugut’s  plan  of  campaign — 
Suvorov’s  successes  in  Italy :  Cassano,  the  Trebbia,  Novi — Suvorov 
diverted  to  Switzerland — Fatal  blunder  of  moving  Archduke  Charles  to 
Rhine — Massena’s  victory  at  Zurich — Suvorov’s  retreat — Anglo-Russian 
expedition  to  North  Holland — Discord  in  the  Coalition  .  .  418-439 


CHAPTER  XXII 

MARENGO,  HOHENLINDEN  AND  LUN&VILLE 

Bonaparte’s  plans  for  1800  —  Passage  of  the  St.  Bernhard — Marengo — 
Moreau  and  Kray  :  Austrians  driven  back — Armistice  and  negotiations 
— Fall  of  Thugut — Operations  resumed — Battle ‘of  Hohenlinden — Austria 
forced  to  conclude  Peace  of  Luneville — Its  terms — The  “  Left  Bank”  lost 
to  Germany  ........  440-454 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE  RESETTLEMENT  OF  1S03 

Napoleon  and  Germany — Arrangements  for  the  redistribution — The  Armed 
Neutrality  of  1800  —  Prussia  occupies  Hanover — The  “Recess”  of 
Feb.  25th,  1803  :  its  terms — Heredity  as  the  principle  by  which  secularisa¬ 
tion  can  be  justified — Ecclesiastical  states  and  Free  Cities  suppressed — 


CONTENTS 


XV 


PAGES 


Results  of  the  redistribution — Gains  and  losses  of  individual  states — The 
question  of  the  Westphalian  bishoprics — The  Recess  practically  the  end 
of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire — Attitude  of  country  to  the  changes — Effect 
of  the  German  Revolution  ......  455-466 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  THIRD  COALITION 

The  Imperial  Knights  after  1803 — Bavaria’s  attack  on  them — Maximilian 
Joseph  and  Montgelas — Napoleon  and  Great  Britain — French  occupation 
of  Hanover — Abduction  of  the  Due  d’Enghien — Napoleon  assumes 
Imperial  title — His  tour  on  the  Rhine — Prussia  and  France:  Frederick 
William  in’s  hesitation — Preliminaries  of  the  Third  Coalition  :  Austria 
accedes  to  it  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  467-480 


CHAPTER  XXV 

ULM  AND  AUSTERLITZ 

The  Austrian  army  in  1805 — Mack  and  his  plan  of  campaign — South-Western 
states  join  Napoleon  —  The  march  to  the  Danube  —  Mack’s  retreat 
intercepted — Capitulation  of  Ulm — French  advance  continued  :  Vienna 
occupied  —  Prussia  decides  to  join  Allies  —  Convention  of  Potsdam — 
Haugwitz’s  mission — Allies  defeated  at  Austerlitz — Treaties  of  Schonbrunn 
and  Pressburg — Austria’s  losses — Napoleon’s  treatment  of  Austria  .  481-495 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  CONFEDERATON  OF  THE  RHINE  AND  THE  OVERTHROW  OF  PRUSSIA 

Projects  for  reconstruction — “  Mediatisation  ” — The  Confederation  of  the  Rhine 
founded — Its  members — Many  minor  states  suppressed — Francis  11  takes 
title  of  Emperor  of  Austria — Attitude  of  Prussia — Napoleon  and  Hanover 
— Condition  of  Prussian  administration,  society  and  army — Breach  between 
Napoleon  and  Prussia — Execution  of  Palm — Campaign  of  1806  :  Prussians 
defeated  at  Jena  and  Auerstadt  —  Collapse  of  Prussian  resistance  — 
Ministerial  changes :  Haugwitz  retires  ....  496-512 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

FRIEDLAND,  TILSIT  AND  ERFURT 

Winter  campaign  of  1806-1807  :  Pultusk  and  Eylau — Austria’s  inaction — 
England’s  wasted  opportunity — Battle  of  Friedland — Peace  of  Tilsit — 
Humiliation  of  Prussia :  its  harsh  treatment — Territorial  changes  in 
Germany :  the  Kingdom  of  Westphalia ;  the  Grand  Duchy  ol  Berg ;  the 
coast-lands — Outbreak  of  Peninsular  War — Napoleon’s  relations  with 
Russia  —  The  Prussian  indemnity  —  Congress  at  Erfurt:  its  delusive 
character  5I3“S24 


xvi  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 


Austria’s  effort  to  overthrow  napoleon 

PAGES 

Napoleon’s  policy  towards  Germany  —  Austria’s  preparations  :  Stadion  and 
Archduke  Charles — The  best  chance  missed  (autumn  1808) — Outbreak  of 
hostilities — The  Eckmiihl  campaign — The  Archduke  at  fault — Abortive 
risings  in  North  Germany :  Schill’s,  Brunswick’s  —  Napoleon  takes 
Vienna — Operations  in  Italy  and  Tyrol — Napoleon  defeated  at  Aspern — 

The  advantage  not  improved — Battles  of  Raab  and  Wagram — Position 
after  Wagram — The  Walcheren  expedition — Prussia  remains  inactive — 
Treaty  of  Schonbrunn :  heavy  losses  of  Austria — Tyrolese  abandoned — 

Fall  of  Stadion  :  Metternich’s  change  of  policy  .  .  .  525—546 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

9 

GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON’S  MERCY 

Attitude  of  Germany  to  Napoleon  :  altered  by  the  Continental  System.  Bavaria 
under  Maximilian  Joseph — Baden — Frederick  1  of  Wurtemberg — Saxony 
and  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw — Hesse-Darmstadt  and  Wurzburg — 
Dalberg’s  Grand  Duchy  of  Frankfort — Berg  and  the  Continental  System — 
Jerome’s  Kingdom  of  Westphalia — Napoleon’s  exactions  and  annexations — 
Prussia  since  Tilsit — Her  revival — Stein’s  reforms  :  the  Municipal  Reform 
Edict ;  the  Emancipating  Edict — Hardenberg  continues  the  work — Von 
Humboldt  and  educational  reform — Military  reorganisation  :  Scharnhorst 
and  short  service — Napoleon’s  changed  relations  with  Russia  and  Austria  : 
his  marriage  to  Marie  Louise — Causes  of  breach  with  Russia — Prussia 
and  Austria  support  him  in  1812 — German  contingents  in  the  Grand  Army 
— Rise  of  a  national  feeling  :  Fichte,  Kleist  and  the  Universities  .  547~570 


CHAPTER  XXX 

THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION  :  TILL  THE  ARMISTICE 

* 

Situation  after  Napoleon’s  repulse  from  Russia — Yorck  and  the  Convention  of 
Tauroggen — Frederick  William’s  dilemma — His  decision — The  Treaty  of 
Kalisch — Napoleon’s  efforts  to  create  a  new  army — Attitude  of  German 
contingents  —  Prussia  takes  arms  —  Attitude  of  Austria  :  Metternich’s 
waiting  policy — Bavaria  and  Saxony — Operations  begin — Eugene  driven 
back  to  the  Saale — Napoleon’s  advance — Battle  of  Llitzen — Operations  in 
North  Germany — Battle  of  Bautzen — Allies  retire  towards  Bohemia — 
Austria’s  intervention — Armistice  of  Poischwitz — Napoleon’s  reasons — 
Metternich’s  policy — Convention  of  Reichenbach — Sweden  joins  the  Allies 
— Preparations  for  resuming  hostilities — The  Allies’  strategy — Vittoria — 

The  armistice  expires  .....  .  57 1—594 

CHAPTER  XXXI 

THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION  ( continued ) — TO  THE  BATTLE  OF  KULM 

Napoleon’s  Grand  Army  of  1813 — German  contingents — The  Allied  forces — 
Schwarzenberg  as  commander-in-chief — Napoleon’s  situation  and  strategy 
— Napoleon  advances  against  Bllicher,  but  is  recalled  to  save  Dresden  from 


CONTENTS 


XVII 


PAGES 

the  Allies’  main  body — Oudinot  beaten  at  Gross  Beeren — Macdonald’s 
disaster  at  the  Katzbach— Allies  attack  Dresden  :  Napoleon  returns  in 
time — His  victory — Vandamme  intercepting  Allied  retreat  is  overwhelmed 
at  Kulm — Situation  at  end  of  August  ....  595-614 

CHAPTER  XXXII 

THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION  (< continued ) — LEIPZIG  AND  HANAU 

Ney  defeated  at  Dennewitz — Napoleon’s  operations  during  September — Treaty 
of  Toplitz — Consequent  defection  of  Bavaria — Wallmoden’s  operations  : 
battle  of  the  Gohrde — Decisive  movement  begun — Blucher  passes  the  Elbe 
— Napoleon  falls  back  from  Dresden — Schwarzenberg  advances  on  Leipzig 
— Concentration  at  Leipzig— Battles  of  October  16th  and  1 8th— Napoleon 
compelled  to  retreat — Evacuation  of  Leipzig — Collapse  of  Confederation 
of  the  Rhine  —  Napoleon  deserted  by  South  Germany  —  Allies  pursue — 
Napoleon’s  retreat — Battle  of  Hanau  ....  615-633 

CHAPTER  XXXIII 

1814  AND  THE  TREAT Y  OF  PARIS 

Napoleon’s  resolve  to  continue  the  war:  he  rejects  the  “Proposals  of 
Frankfort  ’’—Allies’  plans  and  preparations  for  1814 — Napoleon’s  skilful 
campaign  :  battles  of  La  Rothiere,  Champaubert,  Montmirail  and  Montereau 
— Biilow  called  up — Battles  of  Craonne  and  Laon — Battle  of  Arcis  sur 
Aube — Treaty  of  Chaumont — The  Allies  press  on  to  Paris  :  its  capitulation 
— Abdication  of  Napoleon — The  Treaty  of  Paris — Changed  attitudes  of 
the  Allied  leaders  .......  634-643 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

THE  CONGRESS  OF  VIENNA 

Proposals  for  reconstruction — Stein’s  idea  —  Metternich’s  intentions  —  The 
preliminaries  of  the  Congress— Its  meeting — The  principal  negotiators — 
Question  of  reconstruction  :  the  Twelve  Articles — The  Germanic  Con¬ 
federation  agreed  to  —  Its  members  and  constitution  —  Metternich 
champions  localism — The  question  of  territorial  redistribution — Saxony — 
Talleyrand’s  intervention — Russia,  and  Prussia  baulked — Solution  of  the 
Saxon  question  :  its  ultimate  result — Prussia’s  acquisitions — Other  read¬ 
justments — Austria  finds  compensation  outside  Germany — The  settlement 
reviewed  ........  644-659 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 

Napoleon’s  return — The  Treaty  of  Chaumont  renewed — Enthusiasm  in  Prussia 
— Forces  available — The  Allies’  plans — Napoleon’s  strategy — The  Allied 
armies:  Saxon  contingent  mutinies — Events  of  June  15th:  Ziethen  s 
containing  screen  ;  Ney  and  Bernhard  of  Saxe-Weimar — June  16th,  Battle 
of  Ligny — Defeat  of  Prussians — Battle  of  Quatre  Bras — June  17th,  Welling¬ 
ton’s  retreat — Grouchy  detached  to  pursue  Prussians — Gneisenau  retires  on 

b 


xviii  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


*  PAGES 

Wavre — June  18th,  Grouchy’s  movements — Blucher  moves  to  Waterloo  : 
his  late  arrival  there,  its  causes  and  effects — Battle  of  Waterloo  :  part' 
played  by  the  German  contingents — Principal  phases  of  the  battle — The 
Prussian  share  —  Total  overthrow  of  Napoleon — June  19th,  battle  of 
Wavre  :  Grouchy’s  retreat — Subsequent  operations — Restoration  of  peace  : 
Prussia  baulked  of  vengeance — Second  Treaty  of  Paris  :  its  terms,  as  a 
landmark  in  German  history — Situation  of  Germany  :  a  compromise,  not  a 
settlement  ........  660-702 


Genealogical  Tables — 

I.  The  Hapsburgs  ........  703 

II.  The  House  of  Brunswick  ......  704 

III.  The  House  of  Hohenzollern  ......  705 

IV.  The  House  of  Wettin  .......  706 

V.  The  House  of  Wittelsbach  ......  707 


Index  .........  709-732 


MAPS  AND  PLANS 


Mollwitz,  Chotusitz  and  Sohr 
Prague,  Kolin,  Rossbach,  Breslau  and  Leuthen 
Zorndorf  and  Plochkirch 
Minden,  Kunersdorf  and  Torgau 
Marengo  and  Hohenlinden  . 

Austerlitz  and  Jena  . 

The  Danube  Valley . 

Aspern  and  Wagram 
Germany  in  181 1 
Liitzen  and  Bautzen 
Dresden 

Katzbach  and  Dennewitz 
Movements  between  Dresden  and  Leipzig 
Leipzig 

Saxony,  Silesia  and  Bohemia 
South-Western  States  in  1815  J 
Kingdom  of  Planover  1801-1815/ 

Ligny  and  Prussian  gains  in  1815 
Theatre  of  Waterloo  campaign 
Germany  in  1715 


.  170 

.  228 

246 
.  280 

.  452 

.  508 

•  532 

•  544 

•  570 

.  586 
.  612 

.  616 

.  622 

.  630 

.  632 

.  658 

.  680 

.  696 

at  end  of  volume 


AUTHORITIES 


A 


Arneth,  Von.  Prinz  Eugen,  vol.  in. 

,,  Maria  Theresa. 

,,  Maria  Theresa  und  Joseph  II. 

Broglie,  Due  de. 

Frederic  n  et  Marie  Therese. 

Frederic  II  et  Louis  xv. 

Marie  Therese  Imperatrice. 

Maurice  de  Saxe  et  le  Marquis  d’Argenson. 

La  Paix  d’Aix  la  Chapelle. 

L’Alliance  Autrichienne. 

Cathcart.  War  in  Germany,  1812-1813. 

Chuquet,  A.  Les  Guerres  de  la  Revolution. 

Dropmore  Papers.  (Historical  Manuscripts  Commission  :  MSS.  of  J.  B.  Fortescue, 
Esq.,  4  vols.  and  1  vol.*) 

Droyssen.  Friedrich  der  Grosse  (Part  v.  of  his  Geschichte  der  Preussischen 
Politik). 

Erdmannsdorffer.  Deutsche  Geschichte,  1648-1740,  vol.  ii. 

Fisher,  H.  A.  L.  Napoleonic  Statesmanship  :  Germany. 

Geschichte  der  Befreiungskriege,  1813-1815,  especially 

von  Holleben,  Geschichte  des  Friihjahrsfeldzuges,  1813. 

Friedrich,  Geschichte  des  Ilerbstfeldzuges,  1813  (vols.  i.  and  ii.,  also 
vol.  iii.*). 

Hausser,  Ludwig.  Deutsche  Geschichte  vom  Tode  Friedrichs  des  Grossen  bis  zur 
Grlindung  des  Deutschen  Bundes. 

Hermann,  Alfred.  Marengo. 

Houssaye,  H.  1815  :  Waterloo. 

Huffer,  Hermann.  Der  Krieg  vom  1799  und  die  Zweite  Koalition  (referred  to 

as  Htiffer,  i.  and  ii.). 

,,  Quellen'zur  Geschichte  der  Kriege,  1799-1800  (referred  to 

as  Htiffer). 

Instructions  aux  Ambassadeurs  de  France.  Autriche  (edited  by  A.  Sorel). 

Baviere,  Deux  Ponts  et  Palatinate  (edited 
by  A.  Sorel). 

Oncken.  Zeitalter  Friedrichs  des  Grossen. 

Pflugk-Harttung,  J.  von.  Vorgeschichte  der  Schlacht  der  Belle-Alliance. 
Putter.  The  Political  Constitution  of  the  Germanic  Empire. 

Ranke,  L.  von.  Preussische  Geschichte. 

Rousset,  C.  La  Grande  Armee  de  1813. 

Royal  Historical  Society.  The  Third  Coalition  Against  France  (edited  by 

J.  Holland  Rose). 

Buckinghamshire  Papers,  vol.  ii. 


XIX 


XX  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

Schwertfeger,  B.  Geschichte  der  Koniglich  Deutschen  Legion,  1803-1816.* 
Seeley,  Sir  J.  R.  Life  and  Times  of  Stein. 

Si  borne,  W.  Waterloo  Letters. 

,,  The  Waterloo  Campaign. 

Turner.  The  Germanic  Constitution. 

Ussel,  Vicomte  Jean  de.  Etudes  sur  l’annee  1S13.  La  Defection  de  la  Prusse. 
Waddington.  Louis  xv  et  le  Renversement  des  Alliances. 

,,  La  Guerre  de  Sept  Ans.  (vols.  i.-iii.  going  up  to  1759;  vol.  iv.*). 

Ward,  A.  W.  England  and  Hanover. 

Wellington’s  Dispatches,  vol.  xii.  Supplementary  Dispatches,  vol.  x. 

Wolf.  Osterreich  unter  Maria  Theresa,  Joseph  11  and  Leopold  11. 

Yorck  von  Wartenburg,  Count.  Napoleon  as  a  General  (English  translation). 
ZWEIDINECK  Sudenhorst.  Deutsche  Geschichte  in  Zeitraum  der  Griindung  des 

Preussischen  Konigtum  (referred  to  as  Z.  S.),  vol.  ii. 
,,  Deutsche  Geschichte  von  der  Auflosung  des  alten  bis 

zur  Errichtung  des  neuen  Kaiserreiches,  1806- 
1871,  vol.  i.  (referred  to  as  D.  G.  1806-1871). 


B 


Armstrong,  E.  Elizabeth  Farnese. 

Beamish,  Major.  History  of  the  King’s  German  Legion. 

Brackenbury,  Colonel  C.  B.  Frederick  the  Great  (Military  Biographies). 
Bright,  Dr.  J.  Franck.  Maria  Theresa. 

,,  Joseph  11. 

Bryce,  Rt.  IIon.  J.  The  Holy  Roman  Empire. 

Cambridge  Modern  History.  Vol.  viii.  The  Revolution. 

,,  Vol.  ix.  Napoleon.* 

Chesney,  Colonel  C.  C.  Waterloo  Lectures. 

Clapham,  J.  H.  The  Causes  of  the  War  of  1792  (Cambridge  Historical 
Essays,  xi.). 

Coquelle.  England  and  Napoleon  (translated). 

Fortescue,  IIon.  J.  W.  A  History  of  the  British  Army  (vol.  ii.  for  Ferdinand  of 
Brunswick  ;  vol.  iv.  for  1793-1794). 

George,  H.  B.  Napoleon’s  Invasion  of  Russia. 

Loraine-Petre,  F.  Napoleon’s  Conquest  of  Prussia. 

,,  Napoleon’s  Campaign  in  Poland,  1806-1807. 

Malleson,  Colonel  G.  Loudoun  (Military  Biographies). 

Reddaway,  W.  F.  Frederick  the  Great  (Heroes  of  the  Nations). 

Rose,  J.  Holland.  Life  of  Napoleon  1. 

, ,  Napoleonic  Studies. 

Sorel,  A.  La  Question  de  l’Orient. 

,,  L’Europe  et  la  Revolution  Fran^aise. 

Tuttle.  History  of  Prussia  to  1740. 

,,  Frederick  the  Great. 


A  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

1715—1815 


CHAPTER  I 

GERMANY  IN  1715— THE  EMPIRE  AND  ITS 

INSTITUTIONS 


HE  practice  of  dividing  history  into  more  or  less  con- 


JL  ventional  “  periods  ”  is  always  somewhat  arbitrary  and 
unsatisfactory,  and  at  first  sight  there  hardly  seems  much 
justification  for  treating  the  year  1715  as  an  important  turning- 
point  in  the  history  of  Germany.  If  one  is  seeking  for  an 
end,  for  a  point  at  which  some  long  struggle  has  been  decided, 
some  doubtful  question  settled,  one  would  select  1648  rather 
than  1715,  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  rather  than  those  of 
Utrecht,  Rastatt  and  Baden.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  a  starting- 
point  is  sought,  the  unloosing  of  some  hitherto  unsuspected 
force,  the  appearance  of  a  new  set  of  actors,  the  opening  of 
some  great  question,  1740  and  the  attack  of  Frederick  II  of 
Prussia  on  Silesia  would  seem  to  possess  a  far  stronger  claim. 
But  the  conditions  which  existed  in  1740  and  the  forces  which 
were  then  let  loose  did  not  spring  into  being  in  a  moment ; 
they  were  the  fruit  of  years  of  development,  and  to  appreciate 
them  one  must  go  back  at  any  rate  to  the  Peace  of  Utrecht. 
Similarly,  great  as  were  the  changes  summed  up  at  the  Peace 
of  Westphalia,  when  one  looks  at  it  as  a  landmark  in  the 
history  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  and  of  that  German 
Kingdom  which,  to  its  own  undoing,  was  associated  with  the 
heritage  of  Charlemagne,  it  may  be  argued  with  some  plausi¬ 
bility  that  the  true  failure  of  the  Hapsburgs  to  make  real  their 
position  as  titular  heads  of  Germany  came  with  the  premature 
death  of  Joseph  I  (1711).  Germany  from  1648  to  1815  was 
little  more  than  a  geographical  expression,  its  history,  such  as 


1 


2 


GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


it  is,  is  a  history  of  disunion  and  disintegration ;  but  between 
1648  and  1715  it  does  possess  a  small  degree  of  unity,  and 
that  is  given  it  by  the  persistent  attempts  of  France  to  profit 
by  the  weakness  and  divisions  of  her  Eastern  neighbour,  and 
by  the  efforts  of  the  Hapsburgs  to  unite  the  German  Kingdom 
in  opposition  to  the  aggressions  of  Mazarin  and  Louis  XIV. 
The  Spanish  Succession  War,  fought  out  largely  on  German 
soil  and  by  German  troops,  had  a  very  important  bearing  on  the 
fortunes  of  Germany,  and  at  one  time  it  seemed  that  one  result 
of  it  might  be  a  great  increase  in  the  Imperial  authority  and 
prestige,  and  as  if  the  practical  independence  of  the  territorial 
princes,  established  at  the  Peace  of  Westphalia,  might  be 
substantially  reduced.  But  this  was  not  to  be,  and  as  far  as 
the  constitutional  condition  of  Germany  was  concerned,  the 
Treaties  of  Utrecht,  Rastatt  and  Baden,  instead  of  undoing 
the  work  of  1648,  confirmed  it,  and  left  the  German  Kingdom 
an  empty  form,  a  name  with  no  real  substance  behind  it. 

Thus  the  condition  in  which  the  year  1715  found  Germany 
differed  in  degree  rather  than  in  kind  from  that  in  which  the 
Thirty  Years’  War  had  left  her  in  1648.  The  great  move¬ 
ment  of  the  Reformation  had  been  fatal  to  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire :  it  had  swept  away  the  last  relics  of  its  pretensions 
to  universal  dominion  by  emphasising  the  national  character 
of  most  of  the  states  of  Western  Europe,  and  by  introducing 
between  them  differences  in  religion  which  were  of  more  than 
merely  religious  importance.  The  Thirty  Years’  War  had 
done  a  like  office  for  the  German  Kingdom  :  it  had  completed 
the  ruin  of  the  Emperor’s  authority  over  the  lands  which  were 
still  nominally  subject  to  him.  The  forms  of  the  old  con¬ 
stitution,  the  Imperial  title,  the  nominal  existence  of  the 
Empire  were  to  endure  for  another  one  hundred  and  fifty-eight 
years,  but  the  settlement  of  1648  amounted  in  all  save  the 
name  to  the  substitution  of  a  loosely-knit  confederacy  for  the 
potential  national  state  which  had  till  then  existed  in  the  shape 
of  the  Empire.  Not  that  the  settlement  of  1648  was  the  sole 
cause  of  this  change,  even  the  long  and  terrible  war  to  which 
it  put  an  end  could  not  by  itself  have  effected  so  great  an 
alteration  had  it  not  been  the  last  in  a  long  chain  of  causes 
whose  work  was  now  recognised  and  admitted.  At  the  Peace 
of  Westphalia  the  Hapsburgs  acknowledged  principles  which 
struck  at  the  roots  of  the  authority  of  the  Emperor,  they 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  3 

accepted  because  they  had  failed  to  prevent  the  results  of  the 
disintegrating  tendencies  which  had  been  at  work  for  so  long. 
The  practical  independence  of  the  Princes  of  the  Empire  was 
no  new  thing,  but  it  now  received  formal  recognition ;  the 
principle  cujus  regio ,  ejus  religio ,  now  reaffirmed,  had  been  the 
basis  of  the  Peace  of  Augsburg.  It  was  all  the  more  strongly 
re-established  because,  in  the  meantime,  the  Hapsburgs  had 
led  the  crusade  of  the  Counter-Reformation,  and  were  now 
forced  to  leave  in  Protestant  hands  many  secularised  bishoprics 
as  the  token  of  the  failure  of  their  great  endeavour. 

Even  before  the  Reformation  the  authority  of  the  Emperor 
over  the  German  Kingdom  had  been  weak  and  uncertain, 
though  Maximilian  I  had  done  much  to  assert  it  and  had 
attempted  more,  while  the  possibility  of  converting  the  German 
feudal  monarchy  into  a  strong  national  sovereignty  like  those 
of  England  and  France  was  still  present.  The  process  of 
disintegration  had,  it  is  true,  gone  much  further  in  Germany 
than  elsewhere,  and  localism  was  stronger  and  the  central 
institutions  were  weaker  than  in  France  and  England.  What 
the  Reformation  did  was  that  it  introduced  into  Germany  a 
new  principle  which  served  to  complicate  the  contest  between 
the  spasmodic  attempts  of  the  Emperors  at  a  centralising 
policy,  and  the  disintegrating  tendencies  of  which  the  Princes 
were  the  champions.  The  already  existing  aspirations  to  local 
independence  received  the  powerful  reinforcement  of  the  new 
spirit  of  resistance  which  the  revolt  from  Rome  engendered. 
Seeing  how  strong  the  traditions  of  close  relations  between  the 
Pope  and  the  Emperor  were,  and  how  intimately  the  idea  of 
the  Empire  was  bound  up  with  the  idea  of  the  Universal 
Church,  it  was  only  natural  that  resistance  to  the  spiritual 
authority  of  the  Pope  should  encourage  resistance  to  the 
temporal  authority  of  the  Emperor.  Moreover,  when  Germany 
was  being  divided  into  two  antagonistic  camps,  the  Catholic 
and  the  Protestant,  it  was  impossible  from  the  nature  of  the 
quarrel  that  the  Emperor  should  be  neutral.  He  could  not 
be  the  impartial  head  of  the  whole  nation,  he  must  take  one 
side  or  the  other.  It  was  with  a  crisis  of  the  most  momentous 
importance  for  Germany  that  Charles  V  was  confronted  in 
1519  when  he  was  required  to  make  up  his  mind  between 
Rome  and  Luther.  Had  he  declared  for  Protestantism,  and 
placed  himself  at  the  head  of  a  national  movement  against  the 


4 


GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Papacy,  it  is  possible  that  the  sixteenth  century  might  have 
seen  Germany  really  united.  If  the  Emperor  could  have 
obtained  control  of  the  vast  territories  of  the  Church,  he  would 
have  acquired  the  revenues  and  resources  so  badly  needed  to 
make  the  forms  of  the  central  government  an  efficient  reality. 
But  such  a  course  must  have  brought  him  into  collision,  not 
only  with  all  those  who  clung  to  the  old  faith  and  the  old 
connection,  but  also  with  those  Princes  who  adopted  Protest¬ 
antism,  partly  because  they  found  in  it  a  principle  by  which  to 
defend  their  resistance  to  the  Imperial  authority ;  they  would 
not  have  been  so  enthusiastic  in  their  support  of  Protestantism 
had  the  Emperor  been  of  that  persuasion.  Prelates  and  lay 
Princes  alike  would  have  struggled  hard  to  hinder  so  great  an 
increase  in  the  Imperial  resources  and  so  great  a  change  in  the 
relative  positions  of  the  Emperor  and  his  subjects,  as  that  which 
would  have  been  involved  in  his  annexation  of  the  ecclesiastical 
territories.  As  things  actually  went,  the  Emperor’s  continued 
adhesion  to  Roman  Catholicism  gave  the  Protestant  champions 
of  local  independence  a  permanent  bond  of  union  in  their 
religion.  At  the  same  time,  even  the  Princes  of  the  Emperor’s 
own  religion  could  not  but  be  favourably  disposed — as  Princes 
— towards  resistance  to  the  Imperial  authority  and  efforts  to 
limit  the  Emperor’s  powers. 

The  Peace  of  Augsburg  (1555)  was  of  the  nature  of  a 
truce  rather  than  a  settlement.  The  evenly-balanced  con¬ 
tending  forces  agreed  to  a  compromise  which  actually 
secured  to  Germany  over  sixty  years  of  religious  peace  of 
a  kind,  but  it  was  absolutely  lacking  in  the  elements  of 
finality.  The  omission  of  any  regulations  for  the  position 
of  the  Calvinists,  the  failure  to  enforce  any  accepted  rule  as 
to  new  secularisations,  were  bound,  sooner  or  later,  to  lead 
to  a  new  conflict :  it  is  only  remarkable  that  the  outbreak 
was  so  long  delayed.  Meanwhile  the  acknowledgment  of 
the  principle  ciijns  regio ,  ejus  religio  was  a  fatal  blow  to 
the  Imperial  authority  and  the  first  great  breach  in  the 
outward  unity  of  the  Empire. 

The  circumstances  under  which  the  great  struggle  between 
the  rival  creeds  finally  broke  out  were  such  as  to  make  it 
even  more  impossible  for  the  Emperor  to  adopt  a  neutral 
attitude.  The  local  troubles  in  Bohemia  which  culminated 
in  the  famous  “  Defenestratio  ”  of  1618  were  only  the  match 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  5 

that  fired  the  train,  since  for  some  time  the  Calvinists  of 
Germany  had  been  contemplating  a  war  in  defence  of  their 
religion.  By  adopting  the  Bohemian  cause  the  Elector 
Palatine  and  his  supporters  brought  themselves  into  a  double 
collision  with  Ferdinand  of  Austria.  By  breaking  the  peace 
of  the  Empire  they  set  at  naught  his  authority  as  Emperor ; 
but  he  was  also  King  of  Bohemia,  and  by  assisting  his 
revolted  subjects  the  Calvinists  assailed  him  as  territorial 
ruler  and  as  head  of  the  Hapsburg  house.  Thus  the 
Emperor  could  not  interfere  disinterestedly :  he  could  not 
suppress  the  Calvinist  disturbers  of  the  peace  without  using 
the  Imperial  authority,  such  as  it  was,  on  behalf  of  his  own 
dynastic  territorial  interests.  Not  merely  was  impartiality 
impossible,  he  was  the  leader  of  one  of  the  contending 
parties.  Much  in  the  same  way,  by  accepting  the  Bohemian 
Crown  the  Elector  Palatine  made  it  impossible  for  himself 
and  his  party  to  disassociate  their  defence  of  oppressed 
co-religionists  from  their  own  selfish  interests  and  ambitions. 
Thus  on  the  one  side  the  cause  of  order  and  of  unity  became 
identified  with  intolerance  and  oppression,  on  the  other  anarchy 
and  violence  seemed  to  be  the  natural  corollary  to  religious 
freedom.  In  this  dilemma  there  were  but  two  alternative 
possibilities.  Either  the  Emperor  would  succeed  in  suppressing 
Protestantism  both  as  a  religious  and  as  a  political  factor, 
and  would  thereby  vindicate  his  authority,  or  by  his  failure 
in  this  attempt  he  would  leave  Germany  divided  between 
two  hostile  factions,  one  of  which  must  always  look  upon 
the  decadence  of  the  Imperial  constitution  as  the  surest 
safeguard  of  its  own  existence. 

In  1648  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  announced  to  the 
world  that  after  thirty  years  of  a  most  terrible  and  devastating 
war  both  combatants  had  failed,  and  had  been  obliged  to 
assent  to  a  compromise.  That  the  Hapsburgs  had  failed, 
was  proclaimed  by  their  assenting  to  such  a  Peace,  lo 
their  failure  many  causes  had  contributed ;  their  want  of 
material  resources,  Ferdinand  Il’s  incapacity  and  lack  of  states¬ 
manship,  the  lukewarmness  of  those  Catholic  Princes  whose 
political  aims  would  not  have  been  served  by  the  complete 
success  of  the  Catholic  cause  if  championed  by  the  Emperor, 
but  more  especially  the  intervention  of  foreign  powers  who 
had  good  reasons  of  their  own  for  dreading  the  establishment 


6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


of  Hapsburg  supremacy  over  Germany.  Yet  such  a  result 
had  at  one  time  seemed  probable,  for  Frederick’s  headlong 
folly  had  given  the  Emperor  a  chance  a  statesman  would 
not  have  missed.  But  Ferdinand  had  misused  his  victory 
at  Prague:  he  had  endeavoured  to  do  to  Frederick  what 
Frederick  had  failed  to  do  to  him,  he  had  then  driven  the 
Lutherans  into  taking  up  arms  by  his  efforts  to  reverse  the 
compromise  on  which  the  territorial  distribution  of  Germany 
rested :  he  had  parted  with  Wallenstein  at  the  bidding  of 
the  Catholic  League  when  that  general  seemed  to  have 
Protestant  Germany  at  his  mercy.  Had  the  Emperor  believed 
in  the  honesty  of  Wallenstein,  or  in  the  wisdom  and  justice 
of  the  toleration  advocated  by  that  mysterious  adventurer, 
sufficiently  to  stand  by  him,  it  is  possible  that  his  confidence 
might  have  been  rewarded  by  success;  but  Wallenstein’s 
record  was  not  one  to  inspire  confidence,  and  toleration  was 
a  policy  not  only  in  advance  of  the  age  but  quite  opposed 
to  the  traditions  of  the  Empire  and  of  the  Hapsburg  dynasty. 
Thus  though  the  Peace  left  Bohemia  and  its  dependencies 
in  the  Emperor’s  keeping,  it  left  the  Empire  hopelessly  and 
irretrievably  disunited.  As  the  next  seventy  years  were  to 
show,  not  even  common  dangers  of  the  most  formidable 
kind  could  weld  Germany  together  effectively.  The  acknow¬ 
ledgment  of  the  rights  of  the  heretic  minority  in  the  Empire 
was  in  absolute  conflict  with  the  theory  of  Church  and  State 
on  which  the  Empire  was  based  ;  the  concessions  which  the 
Princes  had  extorted  reduced  the  Emperor’s  authority  over 
them  to  a  mere  form,  and  made  the  name  of  Kingdom  a 
complete  anachronism  when  applied  to  Germany.  But 
signally  as  the  Hapsburgs  had  failed,  their  opponents  could 
hardly  claim  to  have  been  much  more  successful.  The 
Imperial  supremacy  which  Frederick  V  and  the  Calvinist 
Union  had  sought  to  destroy  still  existed,  even  if  it  was  a 
mere  shadow  of  what  Ferdinand  had  hoped  to  make  it. 
The  Protestants,  Calvinists  and  Lutherans  alike,  had  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  freeing  themselves  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Pope,  in  wringing  from  the  Catholic  majority  in  the  Diet  a 
recognition  of  their  right  to  freedom  of  worship  in  their  own 
lands,  and  in  defending  their  possession  of  those  ecclesiastical 
territories  which  the  Edict  of  Restitution  had  endeavoured  to 
wrest  from  them.  But  they  had  not  managed  to  obtain 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  7 

the  rich  and  coveted  abbeys  and  bishoprics  of  the  South : 
indeed,  on  the  whole  they  had  lost  ground.  Bohemia  and 
its  dependencies  had  passed  from  them,  and  the  skilful 
propagandism  of  the  Jesuits  was  rapidly  extirpating  Pro¬ 
testantism  from  its  former  strongholds  there.  The  adoption 
of  January  1st,  1624,  as  the  date  by  which  the  possession 
of  disputed  territories  was  to  be  determined  on  the  whole 
favoured  the  Catholics,  to  whom  it  left  a  majority  of  the 
bishoprics.  Moreover,  the  religious  freedom  thus  won  by 
the  sword — and  in  no  small  measure  by  the  swords  of  the 
Swede  and  the  Frenchman — could  only  be  retained  by  the 
sword.  It  was  indissolubly  connected  with  local  independ¬ 
ence  and  Imperial  impotence;  in  other  words,  the  disunion 
of  Germany  was  its  only  guarantee.  Identified  as  the 
Hapsburgs  were  with  Rome,  with  intolerance,  with  the 
forcible  promulgation  of  Catholicism,  German  Protestantism 
could  not  but  look  upon  the  Imperial  institutions  as  hostile 
to  its  rights  and  could  hardly  do  otherwise  than  seek  to 
prevent  anything  which  promised  to  restore  their  vitality. 
Loyalty  to  the  Empire  seemed  to  the  majority  of  German 
Protestants  incompatible  with  the  safety  of  their  religion. 

The  collapse  of  the  old  constitution  not  unnaturally 
occupied  the  minds  of  the  pamphleteers  and  publicists  of 
the  day,  and  many  were  the  schemes  for  reconstruction  and 
reform  put  forward  in  the  second  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  Among  the  most  important  and  interesting  of 
these  is  the  Dissertatio  de  ratione  status  in  Imperio  nostro 
Romano  Germanico ,  written  by  Philip  Boguslaw  Chemnitz, 
a  Pomeranian  jurist  of  some  repute,  and  published  under 
the  pseudonym  of  Hippolytus  a  Lapide.  The  treatise  sets 
out  an  ideal  which  was  never  realised,  and  was  based  on  a 
theory  which  was  neither  sound  historically  nor  accurate  as 
a  statement  of  the  existing  facts,  the  assumption  that  neither 
the  Emperor  nor  the  Electors,  but  the  whole  Diet  was  the 
sovereign  body.  This  may  be  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that 
Chemnitz  was  actuated  throughout  by  an  intense  hostility  to 
the  Hapsburgs.  When  he  looks  at  them  the  sight  of  the 
sack  of  Magdeburg  rises  before  his  eyes,  and  the  Edict  of 
Restitution  is  for  him  the  type  of  their  acts  and  aims. 

Chemnitz  was  not  the  first  writer  to  find  salvation  for 
Germany  in  the  decrease  of  the  Imperial  authority  and  in  the 


8  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


increase  of  the  powers  of  the  Princes,  but  he  may  be  taken  as 
the  best  example  of  those  who  hold  that  view.  He  regarded 
the  Emperor  as  the  representative  of  an  aristocratic  republic,  the 
sovereignty  of  which  resided  rather  in  the  assembled  Estates 
than  in  the  Emperor.  To  him  the  Emperor  was  little  more 
than  the  nominal  head,  the  minister  of  the  Estates,  not  their 
superior.  Thus  it  is  by  the  Diet,  not  by  the  Emperor,  that 
the  decision  as  to  peace  or  war  must  be  taken,  to  the 
Kammergericht 1  rather  than  to  the  Reichshofrath  2  that  the  final 
jurisdiction  belongs.  Throughout  Chemnitz  assails  the  Haps- 
burgs  in  unsparing  terms  ;  their  pretensions  are  the  principal 
danger  to  Germany,  their  power  must  be  diminished,  their 
Imperial  authority  curtailed  and  restricted  in  every  possible 
way.  “  Delenda  est  Austria  ”  is  his  panacea  for  the  ills  of 
Germany  and  the  burden  of  every  page  of  his  pamphlet. 

Rather  different  was  the  account  given  by  Pufendorf,  who, 
writing  under  the  name  of  Severin  de  Monzambano,  a  fictitious 
Italian  traveller  who  had  made  the  tour  of  Germany,  compared 
the  Holy  Roman  Empire  to  the  league  of  the  Greeks  against 
Troy,  and  pronounced  it  neither  monarchy,  aristocracy,  nor 
democracy,  but  an  anomalous  blend  of  all  three,  “  a  half-way 
house  between  a  kingdom  and  a  confederation,”  which  the 
Emperor  was  striving  to  make  more  like  a  kingdom,  the 
Princes  to  make  more  of  a  confederation.  The  Princes,  he 
pointed  out,  though  nominally  in  vassalage  to  the  Emperor 
from  whom  they  held  their  fiefs,  enjoyed  a  practical  independ¬ 
ence,  having  all  sovereign  rights  in  their  own  territories. 
Indeed  one  thing  only  prevented  Germany  from  being  as 
absolutely  disunited  as  Italy :  the  possessions  of  the  Austrian 
Hapsburgs  formed  a  connected  state  which  alone  gave  Germany 
some  approach  to  unity  by  being  able  and  willing  to  maintain 
the  forms  and  institutions  of  the  Empire. 

Pufendorfs  treatise  provoked  a  reply  from  no  less  eminent 
a  man  than  the  philosopher  Leibnitz,  who  in  his  Contra 
Sevennum  de  Monzambano  dealt  mainly  with  the  need  for 
unity  against  the  enemies  of  Germany.  He  dwelt  on  the 
defencelessness  of  the  Empire,  the  utter  absence  of  military 
organisation,  the  need  for  a  standing  army  and  of  proper 
provision  for  its  support.  But  he  had  also  to  point  out  how 

1  The  Imperial  Chamber  of  Justice  ;  cf.  p.  14. 

*  The  Imperial  High  Court,  the  so-called  “  Aulic  Council 55 ;  cf.  p.  15. 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  9 


slight  were  the  chances  that  any  permanent  organisation  would 
be  established.  To  some  Princes  the  present  situation  offered 
a  good  prospect  of  profiting  by  the  troubles  of  their  neighbours, 
others  for  religious  reasons  entertained  suspicions  of  the  use  that 
might  be  made  of  a  standing  army,  others  again  feared  that 
it  might  be  employed  by  the  greater  powers  to  suppress  their 
petty  neighbours,  and  thus  Leibnitz’s  appeal  to  the  Princes  of 
the  Empire  to  cultivate  better  relations  with  the  Emperor  fell 
on  deaf  ears. 

The  substantial  accuracy  of  Pufendorf’s  description  of  the 
state  of  Germany  will  be  realised  when  one  examines  more 
closely  the  Imperial  constitution  and  the  component  portions 
of  this  anomalous  mixture  of  a  confederation  and  a  kingdom. 
The  Imperial  office,  nominally  elective,  had  practically  become 
hereditary  in  the  Austrian  branch  of  the  Hapsburg  family, 
which  had  provided  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  and  the  German 
Kingdom  with  an  uninterrupted  series  of  rulers  ever  since  the 
election  of  Albert  II  in  1438.  But  the  elective  element  had 
not  entirely  disappeared  :  indeed,  it  might  have  been  better  for 
the  Empire  if  it  had.  Its  survival  merely  served  to  further 
the  decadence  of  the  Imperial  institutions,  for,  from  Charles  V 
onward,  each  new  “  Emperor  Elect  ”  had  had  to  purchase  the 
suffrages  of  the-Electors  by  means  of  “  Election  Capitulations” 
which  circumscribed  and  curtailed  yet  further  the  meagre 
powers  and  rights  still  attached  to  his  office.1  Such  influence 
and  authority  as  the  Emperor  possessed  was  his  on  account  of 
his  hereditary  possessions,  not  in  virtue  of  his  Imperial  office. 

Yet  on  paper  his  rights  as  Emperor  were  still  considerable. 
In  addition  to  the  so-called  Coniitial  rechte ,  those  rights  which 
he  exercised  on  behalf  of  and  by  the  authority  of  the  Diet,  he 
had  certain  “  Reserved  Rights  ”  with  which  the  Diet  had 
nothing  to  do.  He  could  veto  measures  submitted  by  the 
Diet,  he  could  make  promotions  in  rank,  confer  fiefs,  titles  of 
nobility  and  University  degrees.  Further,  he  represented 
Germany  in  all  dealings  with  foreign  powers,  and  it  was  from 
him  that  the  Princes  had  to  obtain  the  coveted  privileges,  de 
non  appellando  and  de  non  evocando,  which  removed  their  law- 
courts  from  the  superintendence  of  the  Imperial  tribunals 
and  made  their  territories  judicially  independent.  A  certain 
amount  of  rather  indefinite  influence  and  prestige  still,  after  all 

1  For  those  of  Charles  v,  cf.  Turner,  p.  120. 


IO  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


deductions,  attached  to  the  Imperial  office,  and  it  need  hardly 
be  mentioned  that  the  Emperor  possessed  in  his  hereditary 
dominions  all  the  ordinary  sovereign  rights  which  the  Princes 
enjoyed  in  their  territories.  Indeed,  it  was  the  great  extent 
of  the  rights  and  powers  of  which  the  Princes  had  become 
possessed  rather  than  any  lack  of  powers  theoretically  his  which 
made  the  Emperor  so  powerless  and  his  office  so  anomalous. 

The  process  by  which  this  had  come  about  has  been 
admirably  described  by  Sir  John  Seeley1  as  “the  paralysis 
of  the  central  government  and,  consequent  upon  that,  the 
assumption  by  local  authorities  of  powers  properly  Imperial.’5 
“  A  number  of  municipal  corporations,”  he  writes,  “  which  in 
England  would  have  only  had  the  power  of  levying  rates 
for  local  purposes  and  of  appointing  local  officers  with  very 
insignificant  powers,  had  in  Germany  become  practically 
independent  republics.  Magnates  who  in  England  would 
have  wielded  a  certain  administrative  and  judicial  power  as 
members  of  Quarter  Sessions,  had  risen  in  Germany  to  the 
rank  of  sovereigns.”  With  all  the  Princes  of  the  Empire 
practically  independent  in  their  domestic  affairs  and  almost  as 
completely  their  own  masters  in  their  dealings  with  foreign 
powers,  not  much  scope  was  left  for  the  intervention  of  the 
Emperor  or  of  any  of  the  machinery  of  the  Empire.  Only 
in  regulating  matters  which  concerned  two  or  more  German 
states  was  the  Emperor  likely  to  be  called  upon  to  act,  and 
his  intervention  was  rather  that  of  the  president  of  a  federation 
of  independent  states  than  of  the  King  of  even  a  feudal 
monarchy.  What  he  lacked  was  the  force  needed  to  compel 
obedience  and  secure  the  execution  of  his  orders.  The  extent 
of  his  impotence  may  best  be  judged  from  the  condition  of  the 
Imperial  revenues  and  from  the  composition  and  organisation 
of  the  Army  of  the  Empire. 

To  say  outright  that  the  Empire  possessed  neither  revenues 
nor  an  army  would  strictly  speaking  be  inaccurate,  but  it 
would  be  a  great  deal  nearer  to  the  real  truth  than  to  affirm 
that  either  of  these  effectively  existed.  Since  1521  there  had 
been  a  unit  of  assessment,  the  so-called  “  Roman  Month,” 
which  represented  the  amount  voted  by  the  Diet  in  that  year 
for  an  expedition  to  Rome  which  Charles  V  was  contemplating. 
The  sum  then  voted,  1  20,000  florins,  was  calculated  to  provide 

1  Life  and  Times  of  Stein ,  i.  12. 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  n 


4,000  horsemen  at  a  rate  of  ten  florins  a  month  and  20,000 
foot-soldiers  at  four  florins.  Since  1521  fractions  or  multiples 
of  this  rate  had  been  voted  from  time  to  time,  for  the 
convenience  of  utilising  an  existing  assessment  was  enormous. 
Hard  as  it  was  to  obtain  payment  of  contributions  even  when 
the  due  proportions  were  assigned  to  those  liable  to  pay,  as  was 
the  case  when  the  Imperial  Roll  of  1521  was  utilised,  the 
difficulty  of  collection  and  the  friction  arising  out  of  it  would 
have  been  multiplied  many  times  had  a  fresh  assessment  been 
necessary  whenever  a  vote  was  passed.  But  even  this  was 
far  from  giving  the  Empire  a  standing  army  or  even  the 
machinery  for  raising  one ;  it  merely  settled  the  proportions, 
and  each  new  call  for  troops  involved  a  fresh  settlement  by 
the  Diet,  which  required  almost  as  much  diplomacy  and 
negotiation  as  an  international  agreement  for  joint  action. 
It  was  never  certain  whether  the  Diet  would  vote  for  sending 
men  or  money ;  though  whichever  form  the  contributions 
might  take  the  Roman  Month  gave  the  proportion  in  which 
the  individual  states  were  liable.  It  was,  of  course,  to  the 
advantage  of  the  Emperor  that  the  contribution  should  be  in 
money,  but  the  contributors  preferred  to  send  men :  it  gave 
them  the  appearance  of  allies  rather  than  of  tributaries,  and, 
moreover,  enabled  them  to  exercise  more  control  over  the 
war :  a  contingent  could  always  be  recalled,  it  was  less  easy 
to  recover  a  money  contribution  once  it  had  entered  the 
Imperial  coffers.1  Nor  was  it  certain  whether  the  vote  of  the 
majority  bound  the  minority,  or  whether  only  those  who  had 
voted  in  favour  of  a  tax  were  liable  to  pay  it. 

Thus  though  many  of  its  members  possessed  armies  of 
considerable  strength  and  efficiency,  as  a  military  power  the 
Empire  was  an  almost  negligible  quantity.  More  than  one 
attempt  at  reform  was  made  in  the  second  half  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  In  May  1681  the  Diet  issued  a  decree 
fixing  the  total  force  to  be  provided  by  the  Circles  at  12,000 
horse  and  28,000  foot,  each  Circle  being  given  the  choice 
between  providing  its  own  men  or  paying  another  <c  armed 
estate”  ( Armirte  Stande)  to  supply  its  allotted  contingent. 
But  though  a  new  unit  of  assessment  was  thus  substituted  for 

1  It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  uncertainty  very  much  increased  the  inefficiency  of  the 
defensive  arrangements  of  the  Empire  :  a  noteworthy  example  was  the  delay  over  the 
despatch  of  troops  to  assist  the  Austrians  in  the  Turkish  War  of  1663-1664. 


12  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


the  Roman  Month  not  even  now  was  a  permanent  force  kept 
on  foot,  and  in  the  War  of  the  League  of  Augsburg  there 
was  continual  friction  between  the  “  armed  members  ”  who 
provided  troops  and  the  “  assigned  ”  who  contributed  to  their 
support.  So  inefficient  was  the  protection  afforded  to  the 
“  assigned  ”  states  by  the  Army  of  the  Empire  that  the 
Franconian  and  Swabian  Circles  finally  resolved  to  reorganise 
their  own  resources,  and  by  raising  troops  of  their  own  to 
avoid  being  “  assigned  ”  any  longer.  With  this  object  a 
scheme  was  drawn  up  by  Margrave  Louis  of  Baden-Baden, 
the  colleague  of  Marlborough  and  Eugene  in  the  Blenheim 
campaign,  which  was  finally  adopted  (Jan.  1697)  at  a  meeting 
held  at  Frankfort.  These  two  Circles,  with  the  Bavarian, 
Westphalian  and  the  two  Rhenish,  formed  the  Association  of 
Frankfort,  undertaking  to  provide  40,000  men  between  them, 
and  to  draw  up  definite  regulations  for  their  equipment  and 
organisation.  This  scheme  would  probably  have  provided  a 
more  efficient  Reichsarmee  than  had  hitherto  existed,  but  the 
prompt  conclusion  of  peace  prevented  it  from  being  put  into 
practice,  and  thus,  never  getting  the  chance  of  being  tested 
in  a  campaign  and  put  into  working  order,  it  remained  a  mere 
paper  scheme.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  Spanish  Succession 
War  it  was  necessary  to  make  entirely  new  arrangements,  and 
that  struggle  found  little  improvement  in  the  Army  of  the 
Empire.  It  was  lacking  in  discipline,  in  homogeneity,  in 
organisation,  in  equipment,  in  almost  everything  that  goes  to 
make  an  army  efficient.  The  states  which,  like  Hesse-Cassel 
and  Brandenburg,  possessed  really  efficient  forces  preferred  to 
hire  out  their  troops  to  fight  the  battles  of  the  Maritime 
Powers  rather  than  employ  them  in  the  less  lucrative  task  of 
defending  the  “  lazy  and  sleepy  Empire,” 1  which  was  thus 
overrun  again  and  again  by  French  armies  who  levied  in 
requisitions  and  in  unofficial  plunderings  sums  far  larger  than 
would  have  sufficed  to  provide  troops  enough  to  keep  Villars 
at  bay.  Nowhere,  indeed,  was  the  disunion  of  Germany  so 
evident  as  in  its  defensive  arrangements,  and  the  last 
appearances  of  the  Reichsarmee  during  the  Seven  Years’  War 
were  a  fitting  finale  to  its  career. 

Not  the  least  potent  reason  for  the  inefficiency  of  the 
defensive  arrangements  of  the  Empire  was  its  poverty.  Nearly 

1  Portland  Papers ,  iv.  441  ;  Hist.  MSS.  Commission. 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  13 

all  the  lucrative  sources  of  income  had  passed  from  the 
Emperor  to  the  local  rulers.  The  Imperial  Chamber  of 
Justice  was  supported  by  a  special  tax,  first  voted  in  1500 
and  known  as  the  Chamber  Terms  (. Kammerzieler ) ;  a  certain 
amount  of  revenue  was  derived  through  the  exercise  of  the 
Emperor’s  “  Reserved  Rights  ”  and  the  Imperial  Cities  paid  a 
small  tribute  amounting  to  about  1  2,000  gulden  ; 1  but  these 
sums  were  quite  insufficient  to  defray  the  maintenance  of  the 
Imperial  institutions,  and  the  want  of  an  Imperial  revenue  was 
one  of  the  reasons  why  the  Hapsburgs  remained  so  long  in 
unchallenged  possession  of  the  costly  dignity  they  alone  could 
afford  to  support. 

Where  there  was  hardly  any  Imperial  income  it  is  not 
surprising  that  there  was  no  common  Imperial  treasury,  still 
less  any  administrative  machinery.  Police  was  left  to  the 
Circles,  an  organisation  the  germs  of  which  are  to  be  found  in 
the  fifteenth  century,  but  which  had  only  been  extended  all 
over  the  Empire  in  1512  by  the  Diet  of  Cologne ; 2  but  this 
attempt  to  provide  for  the  execution  of  the  judgments  of 
the  Imperial  Chamber  had  never  enjoyed  more  than  a  very 
partial  success,  and  by  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century 
the  institution  had  fallen  into  abeyance  in  many  parts  of  the 
country.  In  three  of  the  Circles  only,  the  Franconian,  the 
Swabian,  and  the  Westphalian,  was  the  organisation  sufficiently 
effective  to  demand  serious  consideration.  This  was  because 
in  these  Circles  there  was  no  single  Prince  powerful  enough 
to  become  predominant,  as  was,  for  example,  the  Elector  of 
Bavaria  in  the  Bavarian  Circle ;  on  the  contrary,  they  included 
a  very  large  number  of  Imperial  Knights  and  of  minor  Princes, 
all  so  evenly  balanced  that  the  Princes  chosen  from  time  to 
time  as  Directors  of  the  Circle  had  no  chance  of  making 
themselves  predominant.  An  even  less  effective  piece  of 
administrative  machinery  was  the  Imperial  Deputation,  created 
in  1555  to  assist  the  Circles  in  the  discharge  of  their  duties. 
It  was  in  effect  a  standing  committee  of  the  Diet,  comprising 
the  Electors  and  representatives  of  the  other  two  Estates  and 

1  In  1677  an  edict  fixed  the  gulden  at  60  kreuzer,  the  thaler  being  96:  the 
equivalents  in  English  money  may  be  roughly  estimated  at  half  a  crown  and  four 
shillings. 

2  Even  then  Bohemia  and  the  lands  of  the  Teutonic  Order  had  been  excluded  from 
its  operation. 


r4  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


of  the  Emperor-King,  but  it  was  no  better  able  to  make  its 
authority  effective  than  was  the  Diet.  After  the  Peace  of 
Westphalia  efforts  were  made  to  reconstruct  it ;  it  was  pro¬ 
posed  by  the  Protestants  that  the  Deputation  should  be  drawn 
equally  from  the  two  religions ;  but  as  a  majority  of  the 
Electors  were  Roman  Catholics,  this  could  only  be  done  by 
permitting  one  Protestant  to  vote  twice  or  by  not  counting 
one  Catholic  vote,  both  solutions  being  equally  unacceptable. 
In  the  end  nothing  was  done  to  increase  the  efficiency  of 
the  Reichs deputation ,  and  it  was  never  of  much  influence  or 
importance. 

The  judicial  institutions  of  the  Empire  retained  rather 
more  vitality ;  but  even  they  were  in  a  moribund  condition  and 
had  been  hard  hit  by  the  anarchy  and  disorganisation  produced 
by  the  Thirty  Years’  War.  The  most  important  of  them,  the 
Imperial  Chamber  ( Kammergericht ),  had  been  established 
towards  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  as  a  permanent  court 
of  justice  in  place  of  the  feudal  courts  ( Hofgerichte )  which  the 
Emperors  had  till  then  been  wont  to  summon  at  irregular 
intervals  whenever  enough  judicial  business  had  accumulated. 
These  had  proved  quite  inadequate  to  meet  the  requirements 
of  the  Empire  :  indeed,  the  establishment  of  a  permanent  court 
of  justice  had  been  one  of  the  measures  most  urgently  advo¬ 
cated  by  the  active  reforming  party  of  the  day,  led  by  the  then 
Elector  of  Mayence,  Berthold  of  Henneberg.1  Maximilian  I 
had  given  this  court  a  permanent  establishment  of  a  President 
( Kammerrichter)  and  sixteen  Assessors  ( Urteiler ),  and  some 
additions  had  been  subsequently  made  to  its  staff.  It  was  a 
court  of  original  jurisdiction  for  those  holding  immediately  of 
the  Emperor-King,  of  appellate  jurisdiction  from  the  courts  of 
those  members  of  the  Empire  who  did  not  possess  the  liberally 
granted  privilege  de  non  appellando .2  During  the  Thirty  Years’ 
War  the  Imperial  Chamber  had  almost  fallen  into  abeyance, 
but  at  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  and  at  the  Diet  of  Ratisbon 
(1653)  attempts  were  made  to  reform  and  reconstruct  it. 
The  number  of  Assessors  was  raised  to  fifty,  and  it  was 


1  Cf.  Turner,  pp.  72,  104  ff.  ;  also  C.M.H.  i.  304  and  317. 

2  This  privilege,  granted  to  the  Electors  by  one  of  the  clauses  of  the  Golden  Bull, 
and  since  then  extended  to  most  of  the  chief  Princes,  prohibited  appeals  from  the 
territorial  courts  to  the  Imperial  Courts  ;  the  corresponding  privilege  de  non  evocando 
forbade  the  Imperial  Courts  to  call  up  cases  from  territorial  courts. 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  15 


provided  that  twenty-four  of  them  together  with  two  of  the 
four  Vice-Presidents  should  be  Lutherans,  and  also  that  in  all 
cases  in  which  one  of  the  parties  was  a  Protestant  and  the 
other  a  Roman  Catholic  the  Assessors  chosen  to  decide  the 
case  should  be  equally  divided  between  the  two  religions. 
Moreover,  a  commission  was  promised  to  expedite  the  pro¬ 
cedure  and  improve  the  efficiency  of  the  Chamber.  But  these 
reforms  produced  no  real  improvement.  The  revenues  of  the 
Chamber  were  quite  insufficient  for  its  expenses  and  it  proved 
impossible  to  keep  up  the  full  staff.  The  decay  of  the  Circles 
involved  inefficiency  in  the  execution  of  the  decisions  of  the 
Chamber,  since  it  was  on  the  Circles  that  this  depended.1  And 
it  is  characteristic  of  the  traditions  of  the  Imperial  constitution 
that  the  reforming  commission,  which  was  to  have  begun  its 
labours  in  1654,  never  really  got  to  work  till  1767.  That 
under  such  circumstances  efforts  to  wipe  off  arrears,  to 
accelerate  business,  and  to  check  factious  appeals  and  undue 
litigation  proved  quite  fruitless,  will  be  readily  understood. 
A  disputed  decision  was  practically  adjourned  sine  die  and 
the  mass  of  arrears  grew  rather  than  diminished. 

Soon  after  the  establishment  of  the  Imperial  Chamber, 
Maximilian  proceeded  to  set  up  (1492)  a  rival  organisation 
which  was  far  more  closely  identified  with  the  Emperor  than 
was  the  Imperial  Chamber,  whose  members  were  jointly 
appointed  by  the  Diet  and  by  the  Emperor.  Originally  this 
Reichshoft'ath  or  so-called  “  Aulic  Council  ” 2  was  intended 
to  deal  with  all  business  from  the  Empire  or  the  King’s 
hereditary  principalities ;  to  it  were  also  to  be  referred  all 
cases  in  which  he  had  to  adjudicate  as  King.  It  was  to 
be  something  more  than  a  mere  law  court,  it  was  also  to 
exercise  administrative  functions  in  the  hereditary  possessions 
of  the  Hapsburgs.  These  objects,  however,  were  not  realised, 
and  the  Council  had  to  be  reconstructed  in  1518,  when  it  was 
put  on  a  regular  footing,  with  a  President,  Vice-President  and 
sixteen  Councillors.  Its  members  were  appointed  by  the 
Emperor,  and  with  his  death  their  commissions  were  to  lapse. 
It  was  at  this  time  also  that  the  administration  of  the  Austrian 
dominions,  hitherto  entrusted  to  it,  ceased  to  form  part  of  its 
functions.3  In  1559  further  changes  occurred,  Ferdinand  I 

1  Cf.  Turner,  p.  114.  2  Cf.  C.M.H.  i.  313. 

3  Putter,  Germanic  Constitution  (Eng.  trans.),  i.  358. 


1 6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


confining  its  sphere  to  Imperial  business,  and  giving  it  jurisdic¬ 
tion  as  a  high  court  of  the  Empire.  But  it  was  not  till  the 
Peace  of  Westphalia  that  it  received  formal  recognition  as  such 
from  the  Diet,  which  then  for  the  first  time  took  cognisance  of 
it,  regulating  its  procedure  and  applying  to  it  the  principle  of 
equality  between  religions,  which  was  the  rule  with  the 
Imperial  Chamber.  At  the  Diet  of  1653  another  attempt  was 
made  to  reform  it ;  but  the  Emperor,  resenting  the  interference 
of  the  Diet  and  anxious  to  retain  control  over  the  Council, 
resisted  the  proposed  changes  and  issued  an  Imperial  edict 
(without  allowing  the  Diet  to  intervene)  introducing  certain 
reforms.  On  the  whole,  it  was  more  efficient  as  a  court  of 
justice  than  was  the  Imperial  Chamber,  its  decisions  being 
reached  more  certainly  and  rapidly.  To  a  certain  extent  the 
spheres  of  the  two  courts  coincided  and  collisions  were  not 
infrequent ;  but  whereas  the  Imperial  Chamber  may  be  said  to 
have  dealt  rather  with  cases  between  Princes  or  between 
subjects  of  different  Princes,  the  Aulic  Council’s  province  in¬ 
cluded  matters  relating  to  fiefs  of  the  Empire  and  cases  in  which 
the  Emperor  was  personally  concerned.  At  the  same  time  its 
position  was  somewhat  complicated  by  its  political  aspect.  It 
had  originally  been  an  administrative  rather  than  a  judicial 
body  and  it  had  never  wholly  lost  this  character.  Indeed,  as 
the  Empire  possessed  neither  a  Privy  Council  nor  a  War  Office, 
the  Aulic  Council  may  be  said  to  have  to  a  certain  extent 
supplied  their  place.1 

There  was  also  another  but  even  less  important  Imperial 
Court,  the  Hofgericht ,  which  had  its  seat  at  Rottweil  on  the 
Neckar.  It  represented  the  old  royal  courts  of  a  period  prior 
to  the  erection  of  the  Imperial  Chamber  and  the  Aulic  Council, 
and  had  been  revived  and  re-established  by  Maximilian  I  in 
1496,  and  again  by  Maximilian  II  in  1572.  Still  it  had 
always  been  disliked  by  the  Diet,  and  the  reforms  of  1572 
notwithstanding,  its  position  was  most  insecure,  so  that  one  of 
the  questions  which  the  negotiators  of  the  Peace  of  Westphalia 
had  left  over  for  the  next  Diet  was  that  of  its  abolition.  It  is 
perhaps  unnecessary  to  add  that  the  Diet  came  to  no  decision, 
and  the  Court  protracted  a  useless  and  inconspicuous  existence 
until  the  year  1802.2 

Of  all  the  institutions  of  Germany,  however,  the  Diet 
1  Cf.  Z.S.  i.  26.  2  Cf.  Turner,  p.  136. 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  17 


( Reichstag )  was  the  most  important  Its  origin  may  be  traced 
back  to  the  general  councils  annually  summoned  by  Charles 
the  Great.  During  the  Middle  Ages  it  had  occupied  a  position 
approximately  corresponding  to  the  Etats  Generaux  of  France 
and  to  the  feudal  forerunners  of  the  English  Parliament.  A 
purely  feudal  body,  in  which  tenants  in  chief  alone  might 
appear,  it  had  undergone  modifications  parallel  with  the  change 
in  the  position  of  the  great  feudal  nobles.  As  the  Dukes  of 
Bavaria  and  the  Counts  Palatine  of  the  Rhine  had  developed 
into  petty  sovereigns,  as  their  estates  had  become  in  all  but 
name  European  states  of  the  third  and  fourth  rank,  so  the 
Diet  also  had  changed.  It  had  really  become  a  congress ; 
those  who  attended  it  were,  as  a  rule,  mere  representatives  of 
the  great  feudatories  who  in  former  days  had  been  wont  to 
appear  in  person.  From  a  body  which  was  practically  an 
international  conference  measures  tending  to  the  efficient 
government  of  Germany  were  not  to  be  expected.  Particularist 
ideals  were  bound  to  prevail  over  any  feeble  tendencies  towards 
unity,  the  interests  of  Germany  were  sure  to  be  sacrificed  to 
local  aims  and  objects,  any  proposal  to  strengthen  the  central 
institutions  and  to  set  the  constitutional  machinery  in  effective 
order  could  not  but  excite  the  opposition  of  vested  interests, 
and  was  certain  to  be  judged  not  on  its  merits  but  from  the 
particularist  point  of  view.  Yet  even  so,  it  was  in  the  Diet 
that  the  nearest  approach  to  German  unity  was  to  be  found. 
The  Netherlands,  the  Helvetic  Confederation,  Burgundy  and 
other  countries  once  part  of  the  Empire  had  been  lost  to  it, 
but  not  even  the  strongest  and  most  separatist  of  the  minor 
powers  of  Germany  had  obtained  or  even  sought  exemption 
from  membership  of  the  Diet.  No  privileges  corresponding  to 
the  right  de  non  appellando  marred  the  completeness  of  its 
sphere  of  influence.  Indeed,  though  the  link  it  provided  may 
have  been  more  negative  than  positive,  as  long  as  it  existed 
there  could  be  no  formal  dissolution  of  the  Empire.  It  made 
no  attempt  to  arrest  the  process  of  disintegration,  it  never 
considered  or  contemplated  a  constitutional  reconstruction, 
but  the  fact  of  its  existence  did  to  some  extent  check 
disintegration  and  maintain  the  semblance  of  German  unity. 

Since  the  fifteenth  century  the  Diet  had  been  organised 
in  three  Chambers,  the  College  of  Electors ;  the  College  of  the 
Princes,  Counts  and  Barons ;  and  the  College  of  the  Imperial 


2 


1 8  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Free  Cities.  Of  these  that  of  the  Electors  was  the  most 
important,  since  to  it  fell  the  duty  of  electing  a  new  Emperor 
when  the  Imperial  throne  became  vacant.  The  privileges  of 
the  Electors  were  extensive :  they  not  only  enjoyed  the  rights 
de  non  evocando  and  de  non  appellando)  but  they  received  royal 
dues  ( regalia )  from  mines,  tolls,  coinage  and  the  dues  payable 
by  their  own  territories  and  were  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
independent  sovereigns.  The  Golden  Bull,  which  amongst 
other  things  had  greatly  exalted  their  status  by  declaring 
conspiracy  against  their  lives  to  be  high  treason,  had  fixed 
their  number  at  seven  and  defined  the  great  court  offices  held  by 
them.  The  three  ecclesiastical  Electors  of  Mayence,  Cologne 
and  Treves  were  respectively  Arch  Chancellors  of  Germany, 
Italy  and  Burgundy :  among  the  lay  Electors  the  King  of 
Bohemia  was  Arch  Butler,  the  Count  Palatine  of  the  Rhine 
was  Arch  Steward,  the  Duke  of  Saxony  Arch  Marshal,  and  the 
Margrave  of  Brandenburg  Arch  Chamberlain.  Further,  the 
Bull  had  attached  the  electoral  votes  to  the  electoral  territories, 
which  it  declared  to  be  inalienable  and  indivisible,  while  it  made 
primogeniture  the  rule  of  succession  to  the  lay  Electorates. 
It  was  because  of  this  declaration  that  the  validity  of 
Ferdinand  Il’s  action  in  depriving  Frederick  V  of  the 
Palatinate  of  his  vote  and  transferring  it  with  his  territories  to 
Maximilian  of  Bavaria  was  so  hotly  disputed,  the  partisans  of 
the  dispossessed  family  maintaining  that  the  Emperor  had 
exceeded  his  rights.  They  did  not  deny  the  Emperor’s  right 
to  depose  Frederick,  but  argued  that  as  Frederick’s  offence  had 
been  personal,  so  his  deposition  was  a  purely  personal  matter 
and  could  not  affect  the  right  of  his  descendants  to  the 
Electorate.  At  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  the  question  was 
solved  by  a  compromise,  which  altered  the  constitution  as  laid 
down  in  the  Bull  in  several  important  respects.  An  eighth 
voter  was  added  to  the  Electoral  College ;  but  while  Charles 
Lewis,  the  eldest  son  of  Frederick  V,  regained  the  Electoral 
dignity  for  his  branch  of  the  Wittelsbachs,  he  did  not  recover 
the  office  of  Arch  Steward,  which  his  ancestors  had  held,  but 
had  to  be  content  with  the  newly  created  office  of  Arch 
Treasurer  and  the  Bavarian  vote  was  recognised  as  the  fifth,  so 
that  the  compromise  was  decidedly  in  favour  of  Bavaria.1 
This  solution  left  the  balance  of  religions  in  the  Electoral 

1  Cf.  Erdmannsdorffer,  i.  56. 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  19 


College  inclined  to  the  Catholic  side,  which  with  Bavaria 
and  the  three  ecclesiastical  Electors  had  a  clear  majority  over 
Saxony,  Brandenburg  and  the  Palatinate,  even  when  the 
Bohemian  vote,  which  had  fallen  into  abeyance,  is  not 
reckoned  to  their  credit. 

Between  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  and  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century  the  balance  was  to  some  extent  redressed 
by  the  creation  of  a  new  Electorate  for  the  house  of  Guelph, 
(1692)  when  Ernest  Augustus  of  Hanover  obtained  the 
coveted  dignity  for  himself  and  his  heirs  ; 1  but  any  advantage 
the  Protestants  might  have  hoped  to  gain  from  this  was  lost 
through  the  conversion  of  Frederick  Augustus  of  Saxony  to 
Catholicism  (1696)  in  order  to  improve  his  chances  of  obtain¬ 
ing  the  Crown  of  Poland,  for  which  he  was  then  a  candidate, 
and  by  the  accession  of  a  Catholic  branch  of  the  Wittelsbachs 
to  the  Palatinate.2  But  by  this  time  religious  differences  were 
beginning  to  lose  some  of  their  political  importance,  as  may 
be  gathered  from  the  fact  that,  despite  his  conversion,  the 
Elector  of  Saxony  remained  the  recognised  head  of  the 
Corpus  Evangelicorum ,  in  other  words,  the  nominal  leader  of 
German  Protestantism. 

The  connection  which  the  success  of  the  candidature  of 
Frederick  Augustus  established  between  Saxony  and  Poland 
is  also  of  interest  as  illustrating  the  increasing  power 
and  importance  of  the  Electors.  Saxony  was  not  the  only 
lay  Electorate  whose  fortunes  became  closely  linked  with 
those  of  a  non-German  territory.  The  accession  of  George 
Lewis  of  Hanover  to  the  throne  of  Great  Britain  (1714) 
started  a  connection  which  was  destined  to  exercise  a 
very  important  influence  over  the  affairs  of  Germany  during 
the  next  century,  and  the  conclusion  of  the  celebrated 
“  Treaty  of  the  Crown”  (1701), 3  which  recognised  Frederick 
of  Brandenburg  as  Frederick  I,  King  in  Prussia,  may  be 
said  to  mark  the  point  at  which  the  Hohenzollern  became 
of  European  rather  than  of  merely  German  importance.  So, 
too,  the  close  connection  between  Bavaria  and  France,  the  result 
of  the  policy  followed  by  Maximilian  Emanuel  in  the  Spanish 

1  Cf.  p.  45. 

2  In  1685  the  Simmern  line  became  extinct  with  the  death  of  Charles,  son  of 
Charles  Lewis,  who  was  succeeded  by  Philip  William  of  Neuburg.  Cf.  p.  44. 

3  Cf.  p.  42. 


20  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Succession  War,  enabled  yet  another  Elector  to  play  the  part 
of  an  almost  independent  sovereign  with  a  policy  of  his 
own,  and  submitting  to  hardly  any  control  from  the  nominal 
ruler  of  the  country. 

The  College  of  Princes  had  in  1648  some  seventy-six 
members  with  “ individual  votes”  ( Virilstimmen ),  forty-three  of 
them  laymen  and  thirty-three  ecclesiastics,  besides  four  bodies 
of  voters  who  delivered  a  “  collective  vote  ”  ( Curiatstimme ). 
Of  these  last  there  had  only  been  three  before  1 640,  one 
being  given  by  the  numerous  prelates  who  were  below 
princely  rank,  the  other  two  by  the  Counts  and  Barons, 
divided  for  voting  purposes  into  two  so-called  “  benches,” 
the  Swabian  and  the  Wetterabian.  From  this  last  body  a  new 
“  bench  ”  had  been  formed  in  1640,  under  the  title  of  the 
“Franconian  Counts,”  while  in  1653  the  collective  votes 
had  been  increased  to  five  by  the  grant  of  a  second  vote 
to  the  Prelates.  At  the  Diet  of  1653— 1654  a  proposal  had 
been  put  forward  by  the  Counts  that  a  fourth  College 
should  be  erected  for  them  and  the  Prelates  ;  but  the  scheme 
found  little  support  and  nothing  more  was  heard  of  it. 
The  Curiatstimme  ranked  as  equivalent  to  an  individual 
vote,  so  that  it  would  be  fair  to  regard  the  voting  strength 
of  the  College  of  Princes  as  about  eighty  in  1648,  while  by 
1715  it  had  risen  to  over  ninety.  This  increase  was  caused 
by  the  occasional  exercise  by  the  Emperor  of  his  right  to 
raise  to  the  princely  rank  Counts  and  other  nobles  not 
hitherto  in  possession  of  a  Virilstimme.  This  right,  which 
gave  the  Emperor  the  power  of  rewarding  his  supporters 
and  at  the  same  time  increasing  his  influence  in  the  College  of 
Princes,  had  been  in  dispute  until  the  Diet  of  1653— 1654, 
at  which  it  had  been  definitely  recognised,  with  the  limitation 
that  those  thus  raised  to  the  rank  must  possess  as  a  qualifica¬ 
tion  territories  held  immediately  of  the  Emperor,  a  condition 
imposed  to  prevent  the  swamping  of  the  College  by  lavish 
creations.  At  the  same  time  there  were  never  as  many 
individual  holders  of  Virilstimmen  as  there  were  Virilstimmen , 
for  many  Princes  had  come  into  possession  of  more  than 
one  qualifying  piece  of  territory.  Thus  it  was  that  the 
Electors  were  members  of  the  College  of  Princes,  Branden¬ 
burg  having  as  many  as  five  votes,  while  Austria  possessed 
three,  Burgundy,  although  actually  in  Spanish  possession, 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS 


21 


Styria  and  Tyrol  providing  her  qualifications.  The  balance 
between  the  religions  favoured  the  Catholics,  who  were  in 
the  proportion  of  five  to  four  even  after  several  of  the  votes 
attached  to  the  secularised  bishoprics  of  North  Germany 
had  passed  into  Protestant  hands  in  1 648.  Of  these  Hal- 
berstadt,  Kammin  and  Minden  had  fallen  to  Brandenburg,1 
Magdeburg  to  Saxony,2  Ratzeburg  to  Mecklenburg  -  Strelitz, 
Hersfeld  to  Hesse  -  Cassel,  Schwerin  to  Mecklenburg- 
Schwerin,  and  Bremen  and  Verden  to  Sweden.3  Another 
foreign  ruler  was  also  a  member  of  the  College  of  Princes 
as  the  possessor  of  Holstein.  Gliickstadt  provided  the  King 
of  Denmark  with  a  qualification,  but  Savoy  had  allowed  her 
vote  to  lapse  into  abeyance.  Among  the  possessors  of  more 
than  one  vote  may  be  mentioned  the  Palatine  Wittelsbachs 
who  had  five,4  the  various  branches  of  the  Brunswick  family 
who  had  also  five  between  them,5  while  a  like  number  were 
held  by  the  Ernestine  Saxons.  Baden,  Hesse  and  Mecklen¬ 
burg  had  three  apiece,  and  Wtirtemberg  two,  for  Mompelgard 
(Montbeliard)  and  Stuttgart. 

Least  in  importance  was  the  remaining  College  of  the  Diet, 
that  of  the  Free  Imperial  Cities.  It  might  have  been  thought 
that  the  constant  quarrels  between  the  two  other  Colleges 
would  have  been  turned  to  good  use  by  the  third.  The 
Princes  were  always  bitterly  jealous  of  the  privileges  of  the 
Electors,  and  friction  was  frequent.  But  the  Cities  were  in  no 
position  to  profit  by  this.  It  was  only  at  the  Peace  of 
Westphalia  that  the  old  dispute  as  to  the  value  of  their  vote 
had  been  settled  in  their  favour,  and  that  it  had  been  agreed 
that  they  should  possess  the  Votum  decisivum  and  not  merely 
the  Vohini  Consultativiim.  Even  then  the  parallel  questions, 
whether  the  Cities  should  be  called  upon  to  decide  when  the 
Electors  and  Princes  disagreed  and  whether  the  Electors  and 
Princes  combined  could  carry  a  point  against  the  Cities,  had  been 
left  to  the  next  meeting  of  the  Diet,  to  be  decided  in  1 6  5  3—  1 6  5  4 
in  a  manner  which  made  the  recognition  of  their  claim  to  the 

1  Her  other  votes  were  for  Ciistrin  and  Eastern  Pomerania. 

2  On  the  death  of  its  Saxon  administrator,  Augustus,  son  of  John  George  i,  in 
1680,  Magdeburg  reverted,  as  duly  arranged,  to  Brandenburg. 

3  The  cession  of  Bremen  and  Verden  to  Hanover  (i  720)  added  two  votes  to 
those  possessed  by 'the  Guelphs. 

4  For  Lantern,  Neuburg,  Simmern,  Veldenz  and  Zweibrucken. 

5  For  Calenberg,  Celle,  Grubenhagen,  Saxe-Lauenberg  and  Wolfenbiittel. 


22  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Votum  decisivum  a  mere  farce,  for  it  was  settled  that  the  Cities 
should  only  be  called  upon  to  vote  when  the  other  two  Colleges 
were  agreed.  But  the  reasons  for  the  unimportance  of  the 
Cities  lay  deeper  than  any  mere  uncertainty  as  to  their 
constitutional  position.  Their  position  was  uncertain  because 
they  had  already  fallen  from  their  high  estate.  Some  of  the 
“  Free  Imperial  Cities  ”  were  no  longer  free,  some  were  no 
longer  Imperial  but  had  passed  under  other  masters,  and  some 
were  not  worthy  of  the  name  of  “  city.”  Their  decline  had 
begun  with  the  changes  in  the  distribution  of  commerce  caused 
by  the  great  geographical  discoveries  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
Even  without  the  Reformation  and  the  Thirty  Years’  War,  the 
German  cities  would  have  been  hard  hit  by  the  opening  of  the 
new  route  to  the  East  round  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  by 
the  great  advance  in  shipbuilding  which  had  made  commerce 
oceanic  and  had  freed  traders  from  the  necessity  of  creeping 
cautiously  along  the  coast.  Moreover,  the  altered  conditions 
of  national  life  in  England  and  France  affected  German  trade 
adversely.  Consolidated  kingdoms  quickly  developed  a  very 
definite  commercial  policy.  Protective  measures  fostered  the 
growth  of  national  commerce  and  industries  to  the  detriment 
of  the  foreigner.  The  Merchant  Adventurers  of  England 
disputed  the  Hanseatic  monopoly  of  the  Baltic,  and  the  legisla¬ 
tion  of  Edward  VI  and  Elizabeth  dealt  the  League  a  crippling 
blow  by  depriving  it  of  its  privileges  in  England.  And  while 
the  old  trade-routes  of  the  Middle  Ages  were  being  deserted, 
while  the  spices  of  the  East  were  finding  their  way  to  the 
North  of  Europe  by  other  lines  than  the  traditional  route  of 
the  Adriatic,  the  Alpine  passes  and  the  Rhine  valley,  political 
as  well  as  economic  conditions  were  fighting  against  the  cities 
of  Germany.  With  the  consolidation  of  the  power  of  the 
territorial  Princes  their  appetite  for  the  acquisition  of  valuable 
sources  of  revenue  increased  in  proportion,  and  more  than  one 
important  city  found  it  impossible  to  resist  the  pressure  of  a 
powerful  neighbour.  Of  concerted  action  on  the  part  of  the 
cities  or  joint  resistance  to  would-be  annexers  there  was  no 
trace.  Not,  as  a  rule,  individually  large  enough  or  wealthy 
enough  to  be  able  to  stand  alone,  the  cities  were  not  sufficiently 
in  union  among  themselves  to  act  together.  Had  they  been 
ready  to  give  up  some  part  of  their  independent  powers  and 
to  place  themselves  in  the  hands  of  the  Emperor,  they  might 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  23 

have  managed  to  escape  having  to  submit  to  lesser  potentates  ; 
but  they  took  no  steps  in  that  direction  and  the  Hapsburgs 
showed  no  inclination  to  meet  them  half-way.  But  vigorous 
resistance  was  hardly  to  be  expected  in  the  unhealthy  state 
into  which  municipal  life  had  fallen.  In  most  cities  a  narrow 
oligarchy  had  usurped  the  local  government  and  completely 
controlled  the  municipal  institutions.  Add  to  all  this  the 
tremendous  upheaval  of  the  Thirty  Years’  War,  the  utter 
disorganisation  of  social,  commercial  and  industrial  life  which 
it  had  involved,  the  lawlessness  and  violence  which  followed 
in  the  train  of  war,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  Free 
Cities  emerged  from  that  struggle  as  political  nullities,  and  that 
in  the  course  of  the  next  half-century  their  political  import¬ 
ance  decreased  rather  than  recovered  itself.  In  1715  they  still 
numbered  about  fifty,  though  many  of  the  largest  and 
most  flourishing  of  them  had  failed  to  retain  the  independence 
of  which  much  smaller  places  were  still  able  to  boast.  Thus 
Leipzig  had  become  subject  to  the  Elector  of  Saxony,  while 
Ulm  was  still  independent.  It  was  not  by  size  or  by  import¬ 
ance  that  the  question  of  freedom  or  subjection  was  determined, 
it  was  by  the  accident  of  the  strength  of  the  would-be  annexer. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  a  city  retained  its  independence  through 
being  the  object  of  conflicting  claims.  Thus  Erfurt,  though 
never  technically  a  Free  City,  had  managed  to  enjoy  a 
considerable  independence  for  some  time  by  playing  off 
against  each  other  the  rival  claimants,  the  Electors  of  Mayence 
and  Saxony,  until  in  1664  the  former  managed  to  arrange  a 
compromise  with  his  opponent  and  by  the  aid  of  the  Rhine 
League  forced  the  city  to  submit.  Bremen,  more  fortun¬ 
ate,  though  compelled  in  1654  to  admit  the  suzerainty  of 
Sweden,  contrived  to  regain  her  independence  twelve  years 
later  by  the  assistance  of  Cologne,  Denmark  and  the  Bruns¬ 
wick  Dukes. 

Those  cities  which  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century  remained  independent  were  for  the  most  part  very 
conservative,  unprogressive  even  to  stagnation,  being  in  the 
hands  of  narrow  and  unenterprising  oligarchies  and  quite 
devoid  of  any  real  municipal  or  industrial  life.  Nuremberg, 
despite  her  sufferings  in  the  siege  of  1632,  and  Frankfort  on 
Main  may  be  mentioned  as  exceptions  to  the  general  rule  of 
stagnation,  while  the  Italian  trade  enabled  Augsburg  to  retain 


24  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


some  degree  of  prosperity  and  activity.  Hamburg  and 
Bremen  had  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  but  little  affected  by 
the  Thirty  Years’  War,  but  the  greatness  of  the  Hanseatic 
League  was  a  thing  of  the  past  and  in  1648  Liibeck  was  the 
only  other  member  of  the  League  which  retained  its  status  as 
a  Free  City,  and  even  these  three  had  lost  much  of  their  old 
commercial  importance.  Cologne  also  owed  to  her  position  on 
the  Rhine  a  certain  amount  of  trade,  but  the  control  which  the 
Dutch  exercised  over  the  mouths  of  the  Rhine  proved  a  serious 
obstacle  to  the  development  of  the  trade  of  Western  Germany. 
Another  of  the  more  flourishing  cities  of  Germany  had  been 
lost  to  the  Empire  when,  in  1681,  perhaps  the  most  high¬ 
handed  of  all  the  acts  of  Louis  XIV  deprived  Germany  of 
Strassburg.  Outside  the  ranks  of  the  Free  Cities,  Dresden, 
Munich  and  Berlin  were  gradually  rising  in  importance 
with  the  consolidation  of  the  powers  of  the  territorial  Princes, 
and  though  Vienna  had  suffered  severely  in  the  great  siege  of 
1  683,  the  Austrian  capital  was  in  some  ways  the  most  flourishing 
city  in  the  Empire.  But  Germany  was  primarily  a  rural  not 
an  urban  country ;  its  cities  were  neither  economically  nor 
politically  to  be  compared  with  those  of  Italy  and  the  Nether¬ 
lands,  and  the  unimportance  of  the  College  of  Free  Cities 
accurately  reflects  the  part  which  the  towns  played  in  German 
history  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

It  would  not  be  going  too  far  to  assert  that  in  none  of  the 
institutions  of  Germany  was  there  anything  which  offered  any 
prospect  of  the  attainment  of  unity  or  real  national  life.  With¬ 
out  a  thorough  reform  of  the  constitution  nothing  could  be 
done  and  of  such  a  reform  there  was  little  chance.  The  Empire 
as  such  was  moribund,  and  in  no  direction  was  any  source  of 
new  life  or  strength  to  be  found  for  it.  To  a  certain  extent 
the  Hapsburgs  had  attempted  in  the  years  between  the 
Peace  of  Westphalia  and  those  of  Utrecht  and  Rastatt  to 
reassert  the  claims  and  pretensions  which  the  Imperial  title 
carried  with  it,  but  their  success  had  been  of  the  slightest.  It 
might  have  been  thought  that  opposition  to  the  encroachments 
of  Louis  XIV  would  have  served  as  a  bond  of  union  ;  that  the 
necessity  for  common  defence  against  so  powerful  and  aggres-  » 
sive  a  neighbour  would  have  rallied  the  country  round  its  nominal 
head  ;  that  the  seizure  of  Strassburg  and  the  other  places  claimed 
by  Louis  in  virtue  of  the  verdicts  of  the  Ckatnbres  de  Reunion 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  25 


would  have  called  to  life  the  dead  or  dormant  national  senti¬ 
ment  of  Germany,  would  have  brought  home  to  the  Princes 
the  need  for  co-operation  and  the  dangers  which  they  and 
their  neighbours  were  running  through  the  pursuit  of  local  and 
particularist  aims.  If  ever  Germany  was  to  be  forced  to 
realise  the  need  for  unity,  if  ever  a  national  movement  was 
to  breathe  fresh  force  into  the  old  institutions  and  make  the 
German  Kingdom  something  more  than  a  mere  name,  one 
might  have  expected  this  to  have  come  about  in  the  last 
quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century.  That  something  of  the 
sort  was  on  foot  is  proved  by  the  countless  pamphlets,  carica¬ 
tures  and  squibs  which  flooded  the  country  about  that  period, 
among  which  the  Bedenken  of  the  great  philosopher  Leibnitz 
are  of  more  than  mere  ephemeral  interest.  In  these  he 
pointed  out  with  lucidity  and  force  Germany’s  urgent  need  for 
union  and  for  proper  preparation  for  war.  But  it  was  in  vain 
that  he  urged  that  the  Emperor  should  put  himself  at  the 
head  of  the  minor  states,  and  that  the  Princes  should  join  him 
in  securing  that  union  of  Germany  which,  according  to  the 
writer,  was  the  only  security  for  the  balance  of  power  and  for 
the  preservation  of  the  peace  of  Europe.  The  Princes  with 
few  exceptions  showed  no  inclination  to  rally  round  the 
Emperor,  no  disposition  to  make  any  sacrifices  for  the  common 
safety,  or  to  abandon  their  purely  particularist  and  selfish 
policies.  Louis  XIV  was  fully  aware  of  the  merits  of  the 
policy  of  divide  et  impera ;  he  saw  that  localism  was  a  force 
which  he  might  use  to  paralyse  and  render  impotent  his 
neighbour  on  the  East,  and  he  rarely  failed  to  find  among  the 
Princes  of  Germany  men  whose  assistance,  or  at  any  rate 
whose  neutrality,  could  be  purchased  for  a  reasonable  price. 
Thus  in  1658  Mazarin  had  founded  the  League  of  the  Rhine, 
and  though  the  action  of  Louis  in  attacking  the  Spanish 
Netherlands  in  May  1667  under  the  doubtful  pretext  of  the 
Jus  Devolutions  seems  to  have  so  frightened  the  members 
of  the  League  that  they  allowed  their  alliances  with  him  to 
expire  in  1668  and  declined  to  renew  them,  he  was  able 
when  attacking  Holland  in  1672  to  secure  the  neutrality  of 
Bavaria,  the  Elector  Palatine,  Treves  and  Wiirtemberg,  and  to 
obtain  the  actual  support  of  Cologne,  of  the  Bishops  of 
Munster  and  Strassburg  and  of  Duke  John  hrederick  of 
Hanover.  It  was  the  lukewarm  support  he  received  from  the 


2 6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Princes,  notably  Bavaria,  Saxony  and  Brandenburg,  which 
caused  the  Emperor  Leopold  to  assent  to  the  inglorious  Peace 
of  Nimeguen  in  1679.  It  was  largely  because  Brandenburg 
had  enrolled  herself  among  the  paid  retainers  of  France  that 
Louis  was  able  to  set  his  Chambres  de  Reunion  at  work  to  carry 
out  his  annexations  unopposed,  and  his  successful  retention  of 
Strassburgwas  not  merely  due  to  the  almost  simultaneous  troubles 
in  Hungary  and  the  outbreak  of  a  new  war  with  the  Turks. 
The  Emperor  had  to  agree  to  the  Truce  of  Ratisbon  in  1684, 
because  Frederick  William  of  Brandenburg  saw  in  the 
necessities  of  the  Empire  a  chance  for  pressing  his  very  dubious 
claims  on  Silesia,  demanding  terms  so  extravagant  that  Austria 
refused  to  grant  them,  with  the  result  that  the  projected  coali¬ 
tion  fell  through,  it  being  realised  that  unless  all  Germany 
were  united  behind  him  it  would  be  useless  for  Leopold  to 
throw  down  the  gauntlet  to  Louis.  The  League  of  Augsburg 
in  1688  included  the  majority  of  the  principal  states  of 
Germany,  and  the  deliberate  devastation  of  the  Palatinate  went 
far  to  exasperate  popular  feeling  against  Louis  ;  but  the-course 
of  the  war  showed  up  not  merely  the  utter  inefficiency  of  the 
defensive  arrangements  of  the  Empire,1  but  also  the  lukewarm 
character  of  the  support  of  many  members  of  the  Coalition. 
Those  from  whose  territories  the  hostile  armies  were  far 
distant  exerted  themselves  but  little  on  behalf  of  their  com¬ 
patriots  on  the  frontier.  From  1690  to  February  1693  no 
contingent  from  Saxony  took  any  part  in  the  war,  and  only 
by  bestowing  on  Hanover  the  largest  bribe  in  his  power,  the 
coveted  Electoral  dignity,  did  the  Emperor  avert  the  formation 
of  an  alliance  between  the  Brunswick  Dukes,  Brandenburg  and 
Saxony,  to  bring  the  war  to  an  end.  Nor  was  Germany  any 
more  solid  in  its  support  of  the  Emperor  in  the  War  of  the 
Spanish  Succession.  Duke  Anthony  Ulrich  of  Brunswick- 
Wolfenbuttel  was  only  prevented  from  assisting  the  French  by 
the  prompt  action  of  his  cousins  at  Hanover  and  Celle,  who 
occupied  his  territories  and  disarmed  his  troops,  while  the 
defection  of  the  Wittelsbach  Electors  of  Bavaria  and  Cologne 
threatened  at  one  time  to  ruin  the  Grand  Alliance  by  allowing 
the  French  to  penetrate  to  Vienna  and  dictate  terms  to  the 
Hapsburg  in  his  capital. 

Nor  does  the  case  appear  any  better  when  one  turns  to 
1  Cf.  Erdmannsdorffer,  ii.  25,  and  Z.S.  ii.  41. 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  27 

another  important  theatre  and  follows  the  course  of  the  struggle 
with  the  still  powerful  and  aggressive  Moslem  who  was  threat¬ 
ening  Germany  from  the  South-East.  At  no  time  was  there 
a  complete  or  a  spontaneous  rally  for  the  defence  of  the  Cross 
against  the  Crescent.  Religious  fervour  and  patriotism  seemed 
equally  extinct.  Northern  and  Western  Germany  did  little  to 
beat  back  the  tide  of  Turkish  conquest  in  1664,  and  the  con¬ 
tingents  of  the  Rhine  League  who  shared  in  the  victory  at  St. 
Gotthard  on  the  Raab  fought  there  at  the  bidding  of  their 
patron  Louis  XIV.  In  1683,  again,  only  two  North  German 
states  were  represented  at  the  relief  of  Vienna,  and  the  con¬ 
tingents  of  Hanover  and  Saxe-Weimar  did  not  total  two 
thousand  men.  Not  a  man  from  the  Rhineland  was  there, 
and  once  again  conditions  which  the  Emperor  could  not 
accept  were  coupled  with  the  protestations  of  zeal  of  which 
alone  Brandenburg  was  lavish.  Indeed,  for  any  assistance  the 
Emperor  received  in  the  task  of  ousting  the  Turk  from 
Hungary  a  price,  not  a  light  one,  had  to  be  paid.  The 
despatch  of  six  thousand  Hanoverians  to  the  Danube  in  1692, 
helped  to  earn  the  Guelphs  the  Electoral  dignity ;  and  when,  in 
1686,  eight  thousand  Brandenburgers  appeared  on  the  Danube, 
it  was  because  the  Emperor  had  consented  to  cede  Schwiebus 
to  the  Great  Elector. 

It  may  be  argued  that  the  Princes  of  Germany  were  thus 
lukewarm,  because  they  felt  that  the  reconquest  of  Hungary 
would  be  of  little  benefit  to  Germany  as  a  whole,  and 
mainly  concerned  the  Hapsburgs  and  their  dynastic  inter¬ 
ests.  This  is  perhaps  to  some  extent  true ;  but  no  such  plea 
can  be  advanced  to  exculpate  those  who  not  only  failed  to 
oppose  the  aggressions  of  Louis  XIV,  but  were  actually  his 
accomplices  and  abettors.  At  the  same  time,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  the  Hapsburgs  cannot  escape  the  charge  of 
having  failed  to  do  all  they  might  have  done.  They  were 
fatally  hampered  by  the  strong  bias  towards  aggressive  Roman 
Catholicism  and  the  alliance  with  the  Jesuits  which  made 
them  objects  of  suspicion  to  the  Protestant  states,  by  the 
semi-Spanish  traditions  of  the  family,  by  their  dynastic  and 
non-German  interests, — as,  for  example,  the  secret  treaty  of 
January  1668  with  Louis  XIV,  providing  for  a  partition  in 
case  the  Spanish  branch  of  the  family  should  become  extinct. 
Moreover,  their  autocratic  traditions  of  government  led  them 


28  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


to  repress  rather  than  to  encourage  anything  in  the  shape  of  a 
popular  movement.  Indeed,  if  they  had  made  more  of  an  effort 
to  reassert  themselves  and  make  good  their  nominal  position 
in  Germany,  the  more  vigorous  elements  in  the  German  polity 
would  have  been  found  opposed  to  them  ;  for  these  elements, 
such  as  they  were,  took  the  shape  of  the  efforts  of  the  larger 
principalities  at  territorial  independence  and  aggrandisement. 
The  rise  of  Brandenburg-Prussia  and  Bavaria,  their  develop¬ 
ment  from  local  divisions  of  Germany  into  minor  European 
Powers,  fatal  though  it  was  to  anything  like  unity  in  Germany, 
certainly  testified  to  the  existence  in  those  states  of  some 
degree  of  strength  and  activity.  Thus  it  is  that  when  one 
attempts  to  trace  the  history  of  Germany  during  the  eighteenth 
century,  one  is  at  once  met  at  the  outset  by  the  fact  that 
Germany  as  a  whole  hardly  has  any  history ;  in  its  place  one 
has  the  history  of  the  various  states  of  Germany,  international 
not  national  affairs  hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  the  history 
of  Europe  as  a  whole,  since  France  and  Russia  and  England 
were  all  more  or  less  directly  concerned  with  the  rivalries  of  the 
different  minor  states.  At  the  most,  the  history  of  Germany 
can  be  said  to  deal  with  the  complete  decay  of  the  constitu¬ 
tional  life  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  and  of  the  national 
life  of  the  German  Kingdom.  Even  the  modified  national 
existence  which  had  still  existed  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century 1  had  disappeared.  A  distinguished  authority  on 
Romano-Germanic  law,  Michael  Munchmayer,  wrote  in  1705 
that  it  would  have  been  about  as  possible  to  produce  unity 
among  Germans  as  to  wash  a  blackamoor  white.  Indeed,  the 
disintegration  had  gone  to  such  lengths  that  it  is  really  rather 
remarkable  that  the  forms  of  unity  and  of  a  constitution  should 
still  have  been  retained. 

To  have  put  an  end  to  the  nominal  as  well  as  to  the 
practical  existence  of  the  Empire  would  doubtless  have  been 
logical,  but  politics  are  not  ruled  by  logic  ;  and  while  there  was 
no  special  reason  why  the  process  of  disintegration  should 
have  been  carried  to  its  logical  conclusion,  for  no  one  in 
particular  stood  to  profit  greatly  by  that  event,  there  were 
excellent  reasons  why  it  should  have  been  left  incomplete.  To 
the  maintenance  of  the  forms  of  the  Empire  as  a  hollow  sham 
there  were  two  possible  alternatives,  reconstruction  and  im- 

1  Cf.  Professor  Tout’s  chapter  in  vol.  i.  of  the  Cambridge  Modern  History . 


GERMANY  IN  1715— EMPIRE  AND  INSTITUTIONS  29 


mediate  dissolution.  Reconstruction  was  out  of  the  question ; 
even  if  there  had  been  any  real  wish  for  it  in  Germany,  of 
which  there  were  even  fewer  indications  in  1715  than  in  1648, 
the  other  Powers  of  Europe  would  not  have  cared  to  see  the 
Empire  so  remodelled  as  to  become  a  reality.  Immediately 
after  1648  an  attempt  at  reconstruction  would  have  met  with 
determined  opposition  from  France  and  Sweden;  in  1715,  if 
Sweden  was  no  longer  a  force  to  be  regarded,  and  France  was 
temporarily  incapable  of  active  interference,  disintegration  had 
gone  so  far  that  the  diplomatic  support  of  France  would  have 
probably  been  sufficient  to  enable  Brandenburg  or  Bavaria  to 
wreck  the  scheme.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  dissolution  of 
the  Empire  was  about  the  last  thing  which  anyone  desired. 
The  Hapsburgs  were  not  the  men  to  make  great  changes 
prematurely ;  the  formal  dissolution  of  the  Empire  would 
probably  have  been  the  signal  for  the  immediate  outbreak  of 
a  struggle  of  the  most  fearful  description,  which  could  hardly 
have  failed  to  surpass  even  the  horrors  of  the  Thirty  Years’ 
War;  a  scramble  among  the  stronger  states  for  the  possessions 
of  the  territories  of  those  of  their  neighbours  who  lacked  the 
power  to  defend  their  independence ;  a  carnival  of  greed, 
violence  and  aggression ;  the  universal  application  to  the  petty 
principalities  of  Germany  of  the  rule  that  might  is  right.  This 
the  continued  existence  of  the  Empire  did  at  least  avert :  the 
semblance  of  law  and  order  was  maintained,  private  war  and 
armed  strife  among  its  members  were  checked,  if  not  altogether 
prevented.  The  existence  of  the  Empire  protected  the 
Principality  of  Anhalt  against  the  danger  of  forcible  annexation 
to  Brandenburg ;  it  made  it  useless  for  the  ruler  of  Hesse- 
Darmstadt  to  cast  covetous  eyes  on  the  Counties  of  Isenburg 
or  Solms ;  it  restrained  Wiirtemberg  from  attempting  to  in¬ 
corporate  the  Free  City  of  Reutlingen  and  Bavaria  from 
compelling  the  Franconian  Knights  to  admit  themselves  her 
subjects  as  she  was  to  try  to  do  at  the  eleventh  hour  of  the 
Empire’s  life.1  In  a  way,  the  very  subdivision  which  made 
the  Empire  so  weak  and  unity  so  unattainable  prevented  the 
Empire  from  being  dissolved.  As  Napoleon  declared,  “  If 
the  Germanic  Body  did  not  exist,  we  should  have  to  create 
it.”  Its  existence  was  at  least  better  than  the  anarchy  which 
dissolution  would  have  brought  in  its  train.  The  three 

1  Cf.  pp.  467-468. 


30  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


hundred  and  sixty-five  states  of  one  description  and  another 
which  were  included  within  it  were,  for  the  most  part,  too 
small  and  too  insignificant  to  be  capable  of  independent  exist¬ 
ence.  Not  even  the  strongest  of  the  minor  states  now  rising 
into  practically  independent  sovereign  powers  was  ready  as 
yet  for  the  actual  dissolution  of  the  Empire.  The  substance 
of  independence  was  as  much  as  Saxony  and  Wtirtemberg 
wanted,  and  it  they  certainly  already  enjoyed.  Having  obtained 
ample  freedom  from  the  control  of  the  Empire,  they  had  no  wish 
to  complete  its  ruin ;  and,  ruin  as  it  was,  there  was  yet  enough 
potential  utility  in  the  old  fabric  for  Austria  to  find  it  worth 
the  trouble  of  its  maintenance.  The  Imperial  position,  with 
its  great,  albeit  shadowy,  traditions,  with  its  claims,  disputed 
and  obsolescent  though  they  might  be,  might  not  be  worth 
attaining  at  a  heavy  cost,  but  it  was  not  to  be  lightly  dis¬ 
carded.  If  Louis  XIV  had  found  it  worthy  of  his  candidature, 
Ferdinand  III  had  had  good  reason  for  keeping  it  if  he  could. 
Possibilities  still  lurked  in  it ;  it  was  not  even  yet  beyond  all 
chance  of  revival.  Joseph  I  had  done  not  a  little  to  reassert 
the  Imperial  claims  and  to  raise  the  Imperial  prestige  and 
authority  when  he  was  suddenly  cut  off  early  in  life :  had  he 
survived,  there  would  have  been  a  very  different  end  to  the 
Spanish  Succession  War  and  the  Empire  would  have  occupied 
a  very  different  position  in  1715.  And  even  then  there  was 
a  chance  that  at  a  more  favourable  season  the  old  machinery 
might  be  put  into  working  order,  the  old  constitution  might 
again  prove  capable  of  being  turned  to  good  account.  So  for 
nearly  a  century  after  the  Peace  of  Baden  the  Empire 
survived,  at  once  in  the  ideas  it  embodied  the  symbol  of  the 
German  unity  which  had  once  existed,  and  in  its  actual  condition 
the  most  striking  example  of  that  disintegration  and  disunion 
of  Germany  which  is  the  main  theme  of  these  pages. 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 

AMONG  the  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  states  which 
together  made  up  the  German  Kingdom  the  territories 
ruled  by  the  Hapsburg  family  deserve  the  first  place,  even 
apart  from  their  long  standing  connection  with  the  Empire, 
since  both  in  area  and  in  population  they  exceeded  all  the 
others.  “  Austria,”  if  by  this  convenient  though  somewhat 
anachronistic  term  one  may  describe  the  multifarious  dominions 
of  the  Hapsburgs,  was  a  conglomerate  of  provinces  fortuitously 
brought  together,  differing  greatly  in  race  and  language,  in 
history  and  traditions,  in  social  and  political  conditions,  with 
little  to  connect  them  save  the  rule  of  a  common  dynasty, 
but  for  the  most  part  geographically  adjacent.  Thus  while  no 
foreign  territory  intervened  between  Austria  strictly  so  called 
and  the  group  of  provinces  in  which  Bohemia  was  the  chief 
and  Moravia  and  Silesia  the  satellites,  the  territories  attached 
to  the  Archduchy,  Carniola,  Carinthia,  Styria  and  Tyrol,  formed 
a  connected  group,  and,  to  the  South-Eastward,  Hungary  with 
Croatia  and  Transylvania  continued  the  Hapsburg  dominions 
in  unbroken  succession  down  the  great  highway  of  the  Danube 
almost  to  the  gates  of  Belgrade.  Till  1715,  Hungary  and  its 
dependencies  had  been  the  only  non- German  territories  under 
the  rule  of  the  Austrian  Hapsburgs,  and  from  1648  to  1683 
Austrian  Hungary  had  included  but  a  small  portion  of  the 
old  Magyar  kingdom,  so  that  the  non-German  element  in  the 
Hapsburg  polity,  which  was  destined  to  be  of  such  doubtful 
benefit  during  the  eighteenth  century,  was  as  yet  comparatively 
insignificant.  Indeed,  in  1648  the  only  detached  portions  of 
territory  which  Austria  possessed  were  calculated  to  interest 
her  in  the  defence  of  Germany  rather  than  to  distract  her 
attention  to  other  quarters,  as  was  the  case  after  17 1 5-  At 
the  Peace  of  Westphalia  she  did  indeed  surrender  to  France 
the  Sundgau  and  other  portions  of  Alsace,  but  she  retained 

31 


32  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


many  scattered  pieces  of  Swabia  which  may  be  comprehended 
under  the  title  of  “Further  Austria”  (  Voi'der  Ostreich).  Though 
separated  from  Austria  by  the  Electorate  of  Bavaria  and  the 
Bishopric  of  Augsburg,  these  districts  along  the  Upper  Danube 
and  in  the  Black  Forest,  among  which  the  Breisgau  and  the 
Burgau  were  the  most  important,  were  within  a  very  short 
distance  of  Austria’s  Alpine  lands,  Vorarlberg  and  Tyrol, 
and  the  Wittelsbach  alliance  with  France  may  be  under¬ 
stood  when  it  is  realised  how  these  Austrian  outposts  in 
Swabia  seemed  to  surround  Bavaria  with  a  cordon  of  Hapsburg 
territory,  and  to  menace  her  with  that  annexation  which  she 
had  been  fortunate  to  escape  during  the  Spanish  Succession 
War.  “Further  Austria”  might  have  served  as  stepping- 
stones  to  bring  the  Hapsburgs  to  the  Middle  Rhine,  and 
enable  them  to  assimilate  the  intervening  territory  just  as 
Brandenburg’s  acquisitions  in  Westphalia1  helped  to  plant 
her  in  secure  possession  of  the  Lower  Rhine.  The  idea  of 
acquiring  Bavaria  by  annexation  or  exchange  was  one  of 
the  most  constant  factors  in  Austrian  policy,  the  dream  of 
Joseph  II,  the  explanation  and  aim  of  many  of  Thugut’s 
intrigues,  not  definitely  abandoned  till  the  need  for  obtaining 
Bavaria’s  help  against  Napoleon  caused  Metternich  to  agree 
to  the  Treaty  of  Ried  in  1813. 2 

It  would  have  been  of  the  greatest  benefit  to  Austria, 
whatever  its  effects  on  Germany  as  a  whole,  if,  instead  of 
conferring  the  Spanish  Netherlands  on  the  Hapsburgs  the 
Treaties  of  Utrecht  and  Baden  had  carried  out  the  project  of 
giving  them  to  the  Wittelsbachs  in  exchange  for  Bavaria. 
Rich,  fertile,  thickly  populated  though  they  were,  the  Nether¬ 
lands  were  a  possession  of  little  value  to  Austria.  Lying  far 
away  from  Vienna,  they  had  not  even  Hungary’s  geographical 
connection  with  the  “hereditary  dominions.”  Hampered  by 
the  restrictions  imposed  by  the  Peace  of  Munster  their  trade 
and  industries  could  not  develop  naturally,  and  though  they 
had  once  been  an  integral  part  of  the  Empire,  the  folly  of 
Charles  VI  in  treating  them  as  part  of  that  Spanish  inheritance 
he  persisted  in  regarding  as  rightly  his  prevented  the  revival 
of  the  old  connection.  No  real  attempt  was  made  to  attach 
them  either  by  interest  or  sentiment  to  their  new  rulers,  and 
when  the  conquering  armies  of  Revolutionary  France  threatened 
1  Cf.  p.  2i,  2  Cf.  p.  619. 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


33 


to  sever  the  connection  between  the  Netherlands  and  the 
Hapsburgs  Austria’s  defence  of  her  provinces  was  so  feeble 
and  faint-hearted  as  to  incur,  almost  to  justify,  suspicions  that 
she  desired  to  be  rid  of  them. 

Of  the  other  acquisitions  made  by  Austria  in  1715,  the 
Duchy  of  Milan  also  had  once  been  subject  to  the  Holy 
Roman  Emperor,  to  whom  it  now  returned  ;  but  here  again  the 
determination  of  Charles  VI  to  regard  it  and  his  other  Italian 
possessions,  the  island  of  Sardinia  and  the  kingdom  of  Naples, 
as  belonging  to  him  as  King  of  Spain,  prevented  any  assimila¬ 
tion  of  these  Italian  dominions  by  Austria.  In  a  way  the  con¬ 
nection  with  Italy  influenced  Austria  but  little  in  the  eighteenth 
century ;  there  was  not  much  intercourse  between  Milan  or 
Naples  and  the  hereditary  dominions,  and  it  may  be  said  that 
it  was  mainly  because  they  excited  the  hostility  of  Spain  and 
so  helped  to  involve  Austria  in  wars  with  the  Bourbon  powers, 
that  these  possessions  affected  her.  It  was  only  later  on,  when 
Austria  had  abandoned  all  efforts  to  reassert  her  position  in 
Germany,  that  she  turned  to  Italy  to  seek  her  compensation  there. 

Racial  divisions  and  jealousies,  the  great  problem  which 
confronts  the  Hapsburgs  at  the  present  day,  had  not  yet 
become  a  pressing  question  in  1715.  The  provinces  were 
too  loosely  connected,  too  little  in  touch  with  one  another, 
to  trouble  much  about  their  relations  with  each  other.  The 
connection  between  them  had  to  become  effective  before  it 
could  be  felt  to  be  oppressive.  The  sense  of  nationality  was 
dormant,  or,  at  any  rate,  inarticulate  and  without  influence. 
The  Government  was  everywhere  in  the  hands  of  the  nobles, 
who  were  but  little  affected  by  racial  sentiment,  except  per¬ 
haps  in  Hungary.  The  nationalist  movement  in  Bohemia  in 
the  nineteenth  century  has  been  largely  a  popular  movement, 
the  outcome  in  a  sense  of  the  great  upheaval  of  the  French 
Revolution.  In  1715  there  was  not  the  least  indication 
of  anything  of  the  sort.  Hungary,  it  is  true,  clung  resolutely 
to  all  its  privileges  and  constitutional  rights,  and  in  the 
fifty  years  that  followed  the  reconquest  of  Hungary  from 
Turkish  rule,  the  Hapsburgs  found  their  relations  with  their 
Magyar  subjects  a  frequent  source  of  trouble.  Hungarian  dis¬ 
loyalty  was  a  source  of  weakness  to  Austria  which  Louis  XIV 
knew  well  how  to  turn  to  his  advantage:  in  I7°3>  when 
Villars  and  Elector  Maximilian  of  Bavaria  threatened  Vienna 


3 


34  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

from  the  Upper  Danube,  Hungarian  insurgents  were  in  the 
field  lower  down  the  river,  and  not  until  January  1711  was 
the  insurrection  finally  suppressed  and  the  authority  of  the 
Hapsburgs  completely  re-established  in  Hungary  and  Transyl¬ 
vania.  One  of  the  principal  causes  of  this  disloyalty  was  the 
mistaken  religious  policy  of  Leopold  I,  whose  bigotry  had 
prevented  him  from  utilising  the  opportunity  afforded  by  the 
reconquest  from  the  Turks.  Had  wiser  counsels  prevailed 
when,  after  a  century  and  a  half  (1541  — 1686),  Buda-Pesth  was 
delivered  from  Turkish  rule,  it  might  have  been  possible  to 
attach  the  Hungarians  to  the  Hapsburg  dynasty.  Religious 
concessions  were  all  that  were  needed,  for  the  so-called 
“Nationalist”  party  formerly  headed  by  Tokoli  had  been  dis¬ 
credited  by  its  alliance  with  the  Turks  and  the  townsfolk  were 
very  hostile  to  the  nobles.  But  the  influence  of  the  Jesuits 
carried  the  day,  and  a  fierce  persecution  of  the  Protestants 
was  set  going  which  caused  the  Hungarians  to  identify  the 
Hapsburg  dynasty  with  Roman  Catholic  intolerance.  Not 
till  Joseph  I  abandoned  this  impolitic  persecution  and  granted 
toleration  to  the  Protestant  religion  was  the  insurrection 
brought  to  an  end,  or  the  foundations  laid  for  that  reconcilia¬ 
tion  of  the  Magyars  to  their  rulers  which  Maria  Theresa  was 
afterwards  to  complete.1  Thus  in  1715,  Hungary  was  hardly 
a  great  source  of  strength  to  Austria,  and  the  almost  com¬ 
plete  autonomy  which  the  country  possessed  helped  to  keep 
them  apart.  The  constitutional  relations  between  Hungary 
and  the  Hapsburgs  had  been  put  on  a  definite  footing  in 
1687,  when,  at  a  Diet  held  at  Pressburg,  the  succession  to 
the  Hungarian  monarchy  had  been  declared  hereditary  in  the 
Hapsburg  family.  The  Emperor  had  on  this  occasion  shown 
a  praiseworthy  moderation :  he  had  not  insisted  on  his  rights 
as  conqueror,  but  had  only  introduced  one  other  important 
modification  of  the  Constitution,  the  abolition  of  Clause  3 1 
in  the  Bull  of  Andrew  II,  which  had  established  the  right  of 
armed  resistance  to  unconstitutional  government,  a  privilege 
similar  to  that  of  “  confederation,”  which  was  to  prove  so 
potent  a  factor  in  the  ruin  of  Poland.  These  concessions 
paved  the  way  for  the  work  Maria  Theresa  was  to 
do,  but  the  recognition  of  Hungary  as  a  quite  independent 
kingdom  established  that  “  dualism  ”  which  the  twentieth 

1  Cf.  p.  182. 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


35 


century  finds  as  a  force  more  powerful  than  ever,  and  which 
has  served  as  an  effective  barrier  against  the  amalgamation 
of  Hungary  with  Austria. 

Regarding  the  dominions  of  the  Hapsburgs  as  a  whole, 
one  might  fairly  say  that  the  dynasty  was  almost  the  only  bond 
between  the  groups  of  provinces  subject  to  it.  The  germs  of 
a  common  administration  existed  at  Vienna  in  the  Conference,1 
in  the  Aulic  Chamber  ( Hofkammer ),  which  was  occupied  with 
financial  and  commercial  questions,  and  the  War  Council ; 
but  the  existence  of  this  machinery  was  hardly  enough 
by  itself  to  balance  the  all  but  complete  autonomy  of  the 
provinces.  Thus  the  War  Council’s  task  of  organising  an 
efficient  standing  army  was  made  all  but  impossible  by  the 
excessive  powers  of  the  local  authorities,  each  province  having 
a  separate  budget  and  negotiating  separately  with  the  central 
authority  as  to  its  contribution  towards  the  common  defence. 
Bohemia  had  actually  its  own  Chancery,  which  was  at  once 
judicial  and  administrative,  being  the  supreme  court  of  justice 
for  Bohemia  and  its  dependencies,  and  also  the  channel  of 
communication  between  the  local  officials  at  Prague  and  the 
Emperor.  The  great  need  of  the  Hapsburg  dominions  was 
centralisation,  and  in  dealing  with  the  Austrian  and  Bohemian 
groups  of  territory,  steady  progress  had  been  made  by 
Ferdinand  III  and  his  sons.  Joseph  I  was  doing  much  when 
his  sudden  death  deprived  Austria  of  the  ruler  who  seemed 
about  to  restore  the  authority  of  the  Emperor  and  to  weld 
together  his  disunited  provinces.  The  change  from  local 
autonomy  to  centralised  despotism  was  no  doubt  bitterly 
opposed  by  those  who  found  themselves  deprived  of  their 
cherished  privileges,  but  in  clipping  the  wings  of  the  local 
Estates  and  wresting  from  the  local  nobles  who  filled  those 
bodies  their  exclusive  control  over  administrative  and  financial 
affairs,  the  Hapsburgs  were  following  a  policy  which  had  every 
justification.  The  feudal  aristocracies  who  controlled  the 
provincial  Estates  administered  local  affairs  with  little  regard 
either  to  the  welfare  of  the  whole  state  of  which  they  formed 
a  part,  or  to  the  interests  of  the  mass  of  the  population  of  the 
individual  provinces.  The  general  weal  was  sacrificed  to  a 
narrow  particularism,  the  peasantry  and  burghers  in  each 
province  were  sacrificed  to  the  selfish  interests  of  the  nobles. 

1  The  Council  of  State  had  been  reorganised  under  this  name  in  1709. 


36  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Provinces  so  disunited,  feudal  oligarchies  so  incapable  of  taking 
any  but  the  narrowest  local  view,  or  of  considering  the  interests 
of  any  class  but  their  own,  needed  to  be  disciplined  by  the 
strong  hand  of  a  despotic  government.  Before  patriotism 
could  replace  localism  and  selfishness  the  provinces  must  be 
knit  together  by  a  common  administration. 

Next  to  the  Hapsburg  dominions,  the  territories  of  the 
Electors  deserve  notice.  The  three  ecclesiastical  members  of 
the  College,  the  Archbishops  of  Cologne,  Mayence  and  Treves, 
form  a  class  apart.  In  the  domestic  affairs  of  the  Empire 
these  three  tended,  as  Catholics,  to  take  the  side  of  Austria, 
except  that  the  traditional  connection  of  the  see  of  Mayence 
with  the  office  of  Arch  Chancellor,  and  consequently  with  the 
duty  of  presiding  in  the  College  of  Electors,  usually  disposed 
its  occupant  to  place  himself  at  the  head  of  that  party  which 
may  be  described  as  that  of  the  “  Reich  ” 1  and  which  was 
usually  opposed  to  the  Hapsburgs.  Thus  Mayence  is  often 
found  opposing  the  Hapsburgs,  and  making  special  efforts 
to  thwart  any  measures  with  a  centralising  tendency  lest 
constitutional  liberties  should  be  infringed.  Yet  it  might 
have  been  expected  that  the  exposed  position  of  these 
ecclesiastical  Electorates  would  have  made  their  holders 
support  any  reforms  which  tended  to  bind  Germany  together 
and  to  make  the  Empire  less  defenceless  against  its  aggres¬ 
sive  Western  neighbour.  Mayence,  it  is  true,  had  but  little 
territory  West  of  the  Rhine,  for  the  bulk  of  her  lands  lay  in 
the  valley  of  the  Lower  Main,  the  chief  outlying  districts  being 
Erfurt  and  the  Eichsfeld  in  Thuringia.  Cologne,  too,  held 
the  duchy  of  Westphalia  in  addition  to  the  long  strip  along 
the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine  from  Andernach  to  Rheinberg,  but 
the  Electorate  of  Treves  lay  almost  wholly  in  the  Moselle 
valley  and  was  much  exposed  to  France.  The  accident  that 
the  territory  along  the  frontier  between  France  and  Germany 
was  not  only  much  split  up  but  was  also  for  the  most  part  in 
the  hands  of  ecclesiastical  rulers,  had  contributed  in  no  small 

1  The  distinction  between  the  body  of  the  Reich  and  its  head  the  Kaiser  is 
one  for  which  there  is  no  satisfactory  English  equivalent.  To  translate  Reichs  by 
“Imperial”  almost  involves  translating  Kaiserlich  by  “Austrian,”  which  somewhat 
unduly  exaggerates  the  reputed  indifference  of  the  Hapsburgs  to  the  Reich  ;  but  if 
one  makes  “  Imperial”  the  equivalent  to  Kaiserlich ,  one  is  left  without  a  word  for 
Reichs:  “national”  would  be  misleading,  “of  the  Empire”  is  a  rather  clumsy  and 
not  very  clear  way  out  of  the  difficulty. 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


37 

degree  to  the  weakness  and  disunion  of  Germany,  and  to  make 
her  a  ready  prey  to  Bourbon  aggression.  Had  Cologne  or 
Mayence  been  the  seat  of  a  hereditary  Electorate  in  the  hands 
of  an  able  and  ambitious  house  like  the  Hohenzollern,  the 
history  of  the  “  Left  Bank  ”  would  be  very  different  reading. 
But  ecclesiastical  rulers,  if  on  the  whole  their  territories  were 
not  ill-governed,  had  not  the  urgent  spur  of  the  desire  to  found 
an  abiding  dynasty  as  an  incentive  to  the  energetic  develop¬ 
ment  of  their  dominions  or  to  the  promotion  of  the  welfare 
of  their  subjects.  Oppression  by  an  ecclesiastical  ruler  was 
infrequent,  energetic  government  rather  rarer,  reforms  and 
progress  almost  unknown.  Of  the  occupants  of  the  ecclesi¬ 
astical  Electorates  in  1715,  Lothair  Francis  of  Schonborn  had 
been  Elector  of  Mayence  since  1693,  and  had  distinguished 
himself  by  his  patriotic  conduct  during  the  war  of  the  Spanish 
Succession.  Realising  that  the  Hapsburgs  alone  could  afford 
to  maintain  the  institutions  of  the  Empire,  which  he  described 
“  as  a  handsome  but  portionless  bride  whose  support  involves 
very  heavy  expenditure,”  he  was,  in  defiance  of  the  traditions 
of  his  see,  a  firm  adherent  of  the  Hapsburg  family,  and  had 
played  no  small  part  in  securing  the  election  of  Charles  VI  in 
1711.  As  ruler  of  Mayence,  he  not  only  protected  the  city 
with  elaborate  fortifications,  but  devoted  himself  to  its  interests, 
and  did  much  for  its  improvement  and  embellishment.  His 
colleague  at  Treves,  Charles  of  Lorraine,  had  only  just  been 
restored  to  his  metropolitan  city,  which  the  French  had 
evacuated  on  the  conclusion  of  the  peace.  Before  the  year 
was  out  (Dec.)  his  sudden  death  at  Vienna  brought  to  a  close 
his  brief  four  years’  tenure  of  his  see,  his  successor  being  a 
member  of  the  Neuburg  branch  of  the  Wittelsbach  family, 
Francis  Louis,  who  had  been  Bishop  of  Worms  since  1694. 
The  Elector  of  Cologne,  Joseph  Clement  of  Bavaria,  had  also 
just  regained  his  Electoral  dominions  with  the  Peace  of  Baden. 
Though  it  had  been  his  election  to  the  see  of  Cologne  which 
had  been  the  nominal  casus  belli  between  Louis  XIV  and  the 
Emperor  in  1688,  Joseph  Clement  had  followed  his  brother, 
Maximilian  Emmanuel,  into  the  French  camp  in  the  Spanish 
Succession  War,  with  the  result  that  he  had  been  driven  from 
his  Electorate,  forced  to  take  refuge  in  France,  and  had  finally 
been  put  to  the  ban  of  the  Empire  in  1706.  His  reinstate¬ 
ment  had  been  one  of  the  concessions  which  England  s 


38  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


desertion  of  the  Coalition  had  enabled  Louis  XIV  to  exact ;  but 
it  was  not  accomplished  without  some  friction,  for  the  Dutch, 
who  were  in  possession  of  some  of  the  fortresses  of  the 
Electorate,  refused  to  quit  Bonn  unless  the  fortifications  were 
destroyed,  and  finally  had  to  be  expelled  by  force.  The 
incident,  however,  did  not  in  the  end  prove  serious,  as  an 
agreement  was  reached  in  August  1 7  1 7  and  the  fortifications 
were  duly  destroyed,  the  same  being  done  at  Liege,  of  which, 
as  well  as  of  Hildesheim,  Joseph  Clement  was  the  Bishop.  In 
this  plurality  he  was  merely  continuing  a  custom  almost  as 
traditional  as  that  by  which  the  Bavarian  Wittelsbachs  had 
supplied  Cologne  with  an  unbroken  series  of  Archbishops  ever 
since  the  election  of  Ernest  of  Bavaria  to  the  see  in  1583. 

Among  the  lay  Electorates,  Bohemia  was  in  the  hands 
of  the  Hapsburgs,  and  the  King  of  Bohemia  had  become  so 
completely  merged  in  the  Emperor  that  it  was  a  question 
whether  the  validity  of  the  Bohemian  vote  were  to  be  any 
longer  admitted.  Saxony  was  held  by  the  house  of  Wettin, 
Brandenburg  by  that  of  Hohenzollern,  the  ambitions  of  the 
Guelphs  had  recently  been  gratified  by  the  creation  for  them 
of  a  ninth  Electorate,  that  of  Hanover,  while  the  Wittelsbach 
family  supplied  two  Electors,  separate  branches  of  the  house 
ruling  Bavaria  and  the  Palatinate  respectively.  Frederick 
Augustus  of  Saxony  was  one  of  the  three  Electors  who,  in 
addition  to  their  territories  within  the  Empire,  were  rulers  of 
kingdoms  outside  its  boundaries.  The  connection  of  Saxony 
with  Poland  was  certainly  one  which  had  brought  no  benefits 
to  the  Electorate,  whatever  its  influence  on  the  distressful 
partner  with  which  Saxony  had  been  linked  since  July  1696. 
It  had  deprived  the  Empire  of  the  assistance  of  Saxony  in 
the  great  war  against  Louis  XIV.  It  had  involved  the 
Electorate  in  the  wars  which  had  troubled  the  Baltic  ever 
since  Charles  XII  of  Sweden  had  opened  his  chequered  career 
by  his  attack  on  Denmark  in  1700.  It  had  brought  the 
victorious  armies  of  the  Swedish  king  to  Alt  Ranstadt,  and 
had  seemed  at  one  time  likely  to  prove  a  link  between  the 
Western  and  the  Eastern  wars.  Indeed,  in  1715  Saxon 
troops  were  actively  engaged  in  the  expulsion  of  the  Swedes 
from  German  soil,  an  enterprise  in  which  Saxony’s  own 
interests  were  but  remotely  concerned.  Moreover,  in  order 
that  no  impediment  should  be  offered  to  his  election  to  the 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


39 


Polish  throne  by  his  Protestantism — which,  it  must  be 
admitted,  sat  but  lightly  upon  him — Frederick  Augustus  had 
“  received  instruction  ”  and  had  been  admitted  into  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church,  by  which  means  the  Roman  Catholic 
majority  in  the  College  of  Electors  was  still  further  increased. 
Yet  it  is  not  out  of  keeping  with  the  other  anomalies  of  the 
Germanic  Constitution  that  despite  this  conversion  the  Wettin 
family  retained  the  nominal  leadership  of  German  Protestantism 
traditional  in  their  line.  It  was  not  thought  necessary  to 
transfer  to  another  dynasty  the  headship  of  the  Corpus 
E v angel icoru m ,  the  organised  union  of  the  German  Protestants 
which  had  been  officially  recognised  at  the  Peace  of  Westphalia. 
Prussia  and  Hanover  both  laid  claim  to  it  when  in  1717  the 
Crown  Prince  of  Saxony  married  the  eldest  daughter  of  the 
late  Emperor,  Joseph  I,  and  became  a  Roman  Catholic,  but 
no  change  was  made :  religious  differences  were  no  longer  the 
potent  factor  in  German  politics  they  had  once  been  and  the 
headship  of  the  German  Protestants  carried  with  it  no  real 
political  advantages.  But  it  is  not  to  this  that  the  comparative 
unimportance  of  Saxony  after  1715  is  to  be  mainly  attributed. 
The  Electorate,  though  fairly  populous  and  including  some 
of  the  richest  districts  of  Germany,  suffered  much  through  the 
accidental  connection  with  a  foreign  country  to  which  no  ties 
of  interest,  sentiment,  race,  or  religion  bound  it.  Moreover,  it 
was  involved  in  further  troubles  by  its  geographical  position 
between  the  two  powers  whose  conflict  is  the  chief  feature  of 
German  history  in  the  eighteenth  century,  while  its  rulers  during 
the  period  were  men  of  little  ability  or  importance.  Frederick 
Augustus  I  did,  indeed,  achieve  a  European  reputation  by 
his  unparalleled  profligacy,  but  he  was  an  indifferent  soldier 
and  an  incompetent  ruler,  and  his  son  and  successor,  Frederick 
Augustus  II,  cuts  but  a  sorry  figure  in  the  Austro-Prussian 
conflict.  It  was  also  unfortunate  for  Saxony  that  John 
George  II  ( ob .  1656)  had  done  for  the  Albertine  branch  of 
the  Wettin  family  what  had  been  done  for  the  Ernestine  line 
a  hundred  years  earlier  on  the  death  of  John  Frederick  II 
(1554).  By  partitioning  his  territories  in  order  to  establish 
separate  cadet  branches  at  Merseburg,  Weissenfels  and  Zeitz  1 
for  his  younger  sons  Christian,  Augustus  and  Maurice,  John 
George  weakened  the  resources  at  the  disposal  of  the  main 

1  Extinct  respectively  in  1738,  1725  and  1746- 


40  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


branch  of  the  Wettin  family.  This  process  had  been  begun 
with  the  partition  of  1485  between  the  Albertine  and  Ernestine 
branches,  from  which  one  may  date  the  decline  of  the  Wettin 
family,  or,  at  any  rate,  the  disappearance  of  the  chance  of 
making  Saxony  a  compact  and  powerful  state,  able  to  exer¬ 
cise  a  controlling  influence  over  the  fortunes  of  Central 
Germany,  but  the  will  of  John  George  carried  it  another  stage 
forward. 

Unlike  the  Wettin  family,  the  Hohenzollern  were  destined 
to  play  a  far  more  important  part  in  Germany  after  1715 
than  had  hitherto  fallen  to  their  lot.  The  reign  (1640— 1688) 
of  the  so-called  “  Great  Elector,”  Frederick  William,  marks  the 
beginning  of  the  advance  of  Brandenburg.  Not  only  did 
the  territorial  acquisitions  which  he  made  at  the  Peace  of 
Westphalia  increase  considerably  the  resources  at  his  disposal, 
but  they  helped  to  connect  the  central  mass  of  his  dominions 
with  his  outlying  possessions  on  the  Rhine  and  beyond  the 
Vistula.  But  far  more  important  were  the  reforms  which  he 
introduced  into  the  constitutional  and  administrative  economy 
of  his  dominions.  Though  “  unable  to  introduce  complete 
uniformity  of  system  and  practice  into  the  affairs  of  his 
several  dominions,”  Frederick  William  did  “impose  the 
principle  of  his  own  supremacy  on  every  official,  and  made  it 
felt  as  a  positive  force  throughout  the  whole  frame  of  local 
polity.”  1  The  credit  of  having  laid  the  foundations  on  which 
the  power  of  Brandenburg-Prussia  has  been  built  up  is  clearly 
his.  The  reorganisation  of  the  army  on  a  professional  basis, 
the  arrangement  by  which  the  sums  devoted  to  its  upkeep 
were  separated  from  the  rest  of  the  revenue  and  placed  under 
the  Minister  of  War,  the  subjection  of  the  local  Estates  to 
the  power  of  the  Elector,  the  overthrow  of  the  constitutional 
liberties  and  privileges  which  impaired  his  absolute  authority, 
the  encouragement  by  the  State  of  all  measures  by  which 
the  material  resources  and  prosperity  of  the  country  might 
be  fostered  and  increased,  are  all  to  be  found  in  the  days  of 
Frederick  William.  Personal  control,  rigid  economy  and  the 
unsparing  exaction  of  efficiency  from  officers  and  civil  officials, 
were  the  leading  features  of  his  system  of  government ;  and 
though  perhaps  his  work  lacked  the  completeness  and  finish 
which  his  grandson,  King  Frederick  William  I,  was  to  impart 

1  Tuttle,  i.  224. 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


4i 


to  it,  it  was  well  done,  and  did  not  fall  to  pieces  when  his 
guiding  hand  was  removed. 

In  foreign  policy  also  the  “  Great  Elector  ”  sketched  the 
outlines  of  the  policy  which  subsequent  Hohenzollern  rulers 
were  to  develope  and  complete.  Of  the  patriotism  and  pan- 
Germanic  ideals  with  which  it  has  pleased  some  modern 
writers  to  credit  him,  it  is  hard  to  detect  any  traces  among 
the  shifts,  the  inconsistencies  and  the  desertions  which  con¬ 
stitute  his  foreign  policy :  to  him  the  aggrandisement  at 
home  and  abroad  of  the  House  of  Hohenzollern  was  the  one 
and  only  end,  and  that  end  he  pursued  with  an  unflinching 
persistence  and  no  small  degree  of  success.  Territorial 
acquisitions  were  what  he  above  all  desired,  and  he  attained 
the  great  success  of  freeing  East  Prussia  alike  from  Swedish 
and  from  Polish  suzerainty.  The  Archbishopric  of  Magdeburg 
fell  to  him  by  reversion  under  the  terms  of  the  Peace  of 
Westphalia  (1680),  he  received  Schwiebus  in  1686  in  return 
for  the  renunciation  of  a  claim  on  Liegnitz,  and  1666  saw  a 
final  division  of  the  disputed  Cleves-Jiilich  heritage.  But 
despite  the  success  of  Fehrbellin  (1675),  Sweden  still  retained 
Western  Pomerania  and  held  the  mouth  of  the  Oder,  and  no 
territorial  gain  resulted  from  the  policy  of  vassalage  to  France 
on  which  Frederick  William  embarked  in  1679  after  he  had 
felt  the  weight  of  Louis  xiv’s  hand  in  the  Peace  of  St. 
Germain-en-Laye.  His  heir,  Frederick  III  as  Elector  and 
I  as  King,  has  perhaps  had  less  than  justice  done  him  by 
those  who  have  done  more  than  justice  to  the  father.  Less 
selfish  and  aggressive  if  less  capable  and  energetic,  he  displayed 
a  loyalty  to  the  House  of  Hapsburg  as  head  of  the  Empire 
which  is  in  striking  contrast  to  the  shifting  and  tortuous 
policy  of  his  predecessor.  In  the  resistance  of  Germany  to 
Louis  XIV,  the  part  played  by  Frederick  I  was  certainly  more 
consistent,  more  honourable,  and,  on  the  whole,  more  effective 
than  that  of  the  Great  Elector.  In  domestic  affairs  he  lacked 
his  father’s  power  of  organising,  his  unsparing  energy  and 
his  talent  for  rigid  economy,  but  he  did  carry  on  the  work 
which  had  been  begun,  and  it  would  be  foolish  to  dismiss  as 
valueless  that  acquisition  of  the  Prussian  Crown  with  which 
his  name  will  always  be  mainly  associated.  Personal  vanity 
and  pride,  a  love  of  titles  and  pomp,  may  have  played  their 
part  in  the  acquisition,  but  it  was  an  achievement  of  solid 


42  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


importance,  which  not  only  gave  Frederick  a  better  position 
in  international  affairs,  but  by  enhancing  the  prestige  and 
authority  of  the  sovereign  was  of  great  use  in  assisting  the 
consolidation  of  his  scattered  dominions.  “  The  Crown  ”  was 
no  mere  fad  or  whim,  it  was  the  logical  conclusion  to  the 
“  Great  Elector’s  ”  work.  Though  based  on  Prussia,  the 
Kingship  extended  over  all  the  possessions  of  the  Hohenzollern, 
and  Frederick  was  “  King  in  Prussia  ”  not  in  Konigsberg  only, 
but  in  Cleves,  in  Minden  and  in  Berlin. 

One  of  the  conditions  upon  which  Austria  had  consented 
to  recognise  the  new  title  was  that  Prussia  should  support 
the  Emperor  in  his  pretensions  to  the  Spanish  inheritance,  and 
Prussian  troops  consequently  played  a  prominent  part  in  the 
campaigns  of  Marlborough  and  Eugene.  Prussian  contingents 
were  to  the  fore  at  Blenheim,  at  Turin,  at  Oudenarde  and  at 
Malplaquet ;  but  it  has  been  well  said  that  “  Prussia  had  a 
policy  but  no  army  in  the  North,  she  had  an  army  but  no 
policy  in  the  West.”  Her  poverty  compelled  her  to  hire  out 
to  the  Maritime  Powers  the  troops  she  could  not  herself  afford 
to  support,  and  this  it  is  which  explains  why  at  the  Peace 
of  Utrecht,  Prussia’s  gains  were  insignificant.  Guelders,  on 
which  the  Prussian  monarch  possessed  a  claim  in  virtue  of  his 
position  as  Duke  of  Cleves,  was  handed  over  to  him,  and  the 
Powers  recognised  Prussia’s  right  to  those  portions  of  the 
Orange  inheritance  which  had  come  into  Frederick’s  possession 
since  the  death  of  his  cousin  William  III.  Mors  and  Lingen 
he  had  held  since  1702,  Neuchatel  since  1707.  But  by  the 
time  the  Peace  was  signed  (April  1  ith,  1713)  the  first  “  King 
in  Prussia  ”  was  no  more,  and  his  place  had  been  taken  by  his 
son  Frederick  William  I  (Feb.  25th,  1713). 

Some  account  has  already  been  given  1  of  the  process  by 
which  the  Wittelsbach  family,  which  had  begun  the  Thirty 
Years’  War  with  one  Electorate  in  the  family,  ended  it 
with  two.  Of  the  two,  the  Bavarian  line  was  incontestably  the 
more  important.  Maximilian  I,  whose  reign  of  fifty-three  years 
(1  598—1651)  may  not  unfairly  be  described  as  the  period  in 
which  the  foundations  of  the  modern  kingdom  of  Bavaria 
were  well  and  truly  laid,  not  merely  had  won  for  Bavaria  the 
coveted  Electoral  dignity  and  the  rich  lands  of  the  Upper 
Palatinate,  but  he  had  been  one  of  the  first  of  the  rulers  of 

1  P.  18. 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


43 


the  minor  states  of  Germany  to  establish  his  autocracy  at  the 
expense  of  his  Estates.  The  Princes  wanted  to  be  absolute 
in  their  dominions  as  well  as  independent  of  Imperial  control, 
for  where  lay  the  benefit  of  being  free  from  external  inter¬ 
ference  if  they  were  to  be  hampered  by  constitutional 
opposition  at  home  ?  Everywhere  there  were  contests  over 
taxation  between  aggressive  Princes  and  recalcitrant  Estates, 
and  nearly  everywhere  it  was  not  the  Princes  who  had  to 
give  way.  This  was  partly  because  the  Estates  were  not,  as  a 
rule,  really  representative  and  had  no  force  behind  them.  The 
peasantry,  unrepresented  and  inarticulate,  accustomed  to  be 
oppressed  and  to  obey,  heavily  taxed  and  in  a  miserable 
condition,  were  of  no  political  importance ;  the  towns  had 
been  hit  too  hard  by  the  wars  and  the  complete  disorganisation 
of  trade  and  industry  to  have  any  influence,  and  the  nobles 
alone  were  unable  to  prevent  the  establishment  of  more  or  less 
absolute  autocracies.  In  this  work  Maximilian  I  had  been 
extremely  successful ;  he  had  stamped  out  Protestantism  in 
his  dominions,  he  had  suppressed  the  opposition  of  the  Estates, 
and  by  his  services  to  the  Catholic  cause  in  the  early  stages 
of  the  Thirty  Years’  War  he  had  made  himself  the  leader 
of  the  non-Austrian  Catholics.  It  was  their  position  as  the 
only  Catholic  Princes  capable  of  contesting  the  quasi-hereditary 
claim  of  the  Hapsburgs  to  the  Empire  that  gave  the  Bavarian 
house  their  special  importance  in  international  affairs,  and 
caused  them  to  be  looked  upon  with  favour  by  the  power 
whose  policy  towards  Germany  was  based  on  the  maxim 
Divide  et  impera.  The  relations  between  France  and  Bavaria 
were  of  slow  growth:  Ferdinand  Maria  (1651  — 1679)  had 
gone  to  the  length  of  promising  to  support  the  candidature 
of  Louis  for  the  Empire  (1670),  but  Maximilian  Emmanuel 
(1679— 1726)  had  at  first  rejected  all  the  overtures  of  France, 
had  been  an  energetic  member  of  the  League  of  Augsburg,  and 
had  only  at  length  listened  to  the  offers  of  Louis  when  the 
death  (1698)  of  his  son,  the  Electoral  Prince,  had  taken  away 
Bavaria’s  chief  motive  for  alliance  with  Austria,  the  prospect 
of  Austrian  support  for  the  Electoral  Prince’s  claims  on  Spain. 
And  there  was  always  a  reason  for  the  Bavarian  Wittelsbachs 
to  look  with  some  suspicion  on  Austria ;  for,  if  the  Hapsburgs 
should  ever  succeed  in  obtaining  a  dominant  position  in 
Germany,  it  would  not  be  long  before  they  would  discover 


44  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


adequate  reasons  for  the  incorporation  in  their  own  dominions 
of  those  Wittelsbach  lands  which  intervened  so  inconveniently 
between  Upper  Austria  and  the  Burgau.  Hence  the  alliance 
between  Maximilian  Emmanuel  and  Louis,  and  the  chequered 
career  of  Bavaria  in  the  Spanish  Succession  War,  which 
afforded  not  less  striking  proofs  of  the  advantages  to  France 
of  possessing  a  client  so  favourably  situated  for  forwarding 
her  designs  on  Austria  than  of  the  utility  to  Bavaria  of  French 
protection  against  Hapsburg  land-hunger.  It  was  to  the  good 
offices  of  France  that  Maximilian  Emmanuel  owed  his  restora¬ 
tion  1  to  his  hereditary  dominions ;  and  though  the  differences 
which  kept  France  and  Spain  apart  for  the  decade  following 
the  Peace  of  Utrecht  tended  to  force  Franco-Austrian  hostility 
into  the  background  for  a  time,  the  old  policy  was  resumed 
by  France  when  the  Empire  fell  vacant  in  1740. 

The  other  branch  of  the  Wittelsbach  family  was  represented 
in  1715  by  John  William  of  Neuburg,  the  brother-in-law  of 
the  Emperor  Leopold  I  and  a  constant  adherent  of  the 
Hapsburgs.  He  was  the  second  of  his  line  to  rule  in  the 
Palatinate  which  had  passed  to  his  father,  Philip  William, 
in  1685  on  the  death  of  Charles,  the  last  of  the  Simmern 
branch.  This  branch  had  not  long  survived  its  restoration 
to  the  Electorate;2  and  though  Charles  Lewis  (1648— 1680), 
the  eldest  son  of  the  “  Winter  King  ”  by  Elizabeth,  daughter 
of  James  I,  had  done  a  good  deal  to  restore  prosperity  to  his 
diminished  dominions,  rebuilding  the  devastated  Mannheim, 
refounding  the  University  of  Heidelberg,  remitting  taxation 
and  giving  all  possible  encouragement  to  commerce  and 
agriculture,  the  celebrated  devastation  of  the  Palatinate  by  the 
French  in  1674  and  its  repetition  in  1689  had  between  them 
thrown  back  the  work  of  restoration,  besides  contributing  to 
embitter  the  relations  between  Germany  and  France.  The 
accession  of  the  Neuburg  line  meant  that  another  Electorate 
passed  from  Protestant  into  Roman  Catholic  hands,  and 
Elector  John  William  had  been  mainly  instrumental  in  securing 
the  inclusion  in  the  Peace  of  Ryswick  of  the  clause  by  which 
freedom  of  worship  in  the  districts  then  restored  by  France  was 
not  to  be  allowed  “  where  not  expressly  stated  to  the  contrary.”  3 

1  It  was  not  till  1717  that  this  restoration  was  finally  completed. 

2Cf.  p.  18. 

0  This  so-called  “Ryswick  clause  was  used  with  effect  against  the  Protestants 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


45 


Moreover,  despite  the  Compact  of  Schwabisch-Hall  (May  1685), 
which  had  guaranteed  freedom  of  worship  to  the  Calvinist  and 
Lutheran  inhabitants  of  the  Palatinate,  Elector  John  William 
had  inaugurated  an  era  of  rigorous  persecution,  which  was 
only  slightly  mitigated  by  the  intervention  in  1705  of 
Frederick  I  of  Prussia.  In  addition  to  the  Lower  Palatinate, 
the  Neuburg  line  possessed  the  principality  in  the  upper 
valley  of  the  Danube  from  which  they  took  their  name,  and 
the  portion  of  the  Cleves  -  Jiilich  inheritance  which  had 
fallen  to  their  lot  as  representing  one  of  the  sisters  of  the 
last  Duke  of  Cleves.  This,  as  settled  by  the  definite  partition 
of  1666,  included  Julich,  Berg  and  Ravenstein,  so  that  the 
rulers  of  the  Palatinate  possessed  more  territory  in  the  Rhine 
valley  than  any  other  lay  potentate.  This  exposed  them  to 
French  hostility  and  may  partly  account  for  their  loyal 
adherence  to  Austria ;  but  the  strained  relations  between  the 
Neuburgs  and  their  Bavarian  cousins  may  also  have  tended 
to  influence  the  attitude  of  the  Palatinate  in  international 
affairs. 

The  balance  of  religions  in  the  Electoral  College,  disturbed 
against  the  Protestants  by  the  succession  of  the  Neuburgs  to 
the  Palatinate  and  by  the  conversion  of  the  Saxon  Electors, 
had  been  to  some  extent  redressed  by  the  erection  in  1692  of 
a  new  Electorate.  The  greater  prominence  of  the  Hohenzollern, 
and  the  misconceptions  too  often  prevalent  in  England  as 
to  the  true  nature  of  the  “  beggarly  Electorate  ”  with  which 
our  country  was  so  closely  linked  for  over  one  hundred  years, 
have  contributed  to  somewhat  obscure  the  real  importance  of  the 
Brunswick  family.  Indeed,  had  it  not  been  that  the  principle 
of  indivisibility  of  territories  was  not  adopted  by  the  family  till 
after  the  separation  of  the  Dannenberg  and  Liineburg  lines 
(1  569)>  and  that  the  connection  with  Great  Britain  from  time  to 
time  involved  Hanover  in  quarrels  with  which  she  had  little 
concern,  it  is  hardly  fanciful  to  imagine  that  Brandenburg 
might  have  found  in  Brunswick  a  rival  quite  capable  of  con¬ 
testing  with  her  the  leading  position  among  the  North  German 
states.  But  until  just  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  lands 
of  the  Brunswick  family  were  but  little  less  divided  than  those 
of  the  Wittelsbachs  or  of  the  Ernestine  Saxons,  while  partly 

of  some  parts  of  Southern  Germany  in  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Of.  Z.  S,  11.  1 34‘* 


4 6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


through  this  and  partly  through  a  premature  disarmament  the 
Brunswick  Dukes  had  fared  very  badly  at  the  Peace  of  1648, 
when  instead  of  sharing  the  Westphalian  bishoprics  with  Branden¬ 
burg,  they  had  had  to  content  themselves  with  alternate  nomina¬ 
tions  to  Osnabriick.  However,  by  the  year  1680  the  various 
branches  of  the  family  had  been  reduced  to  four,  the  Dannenberg 
or  “  new  Wolfenbuttel  ”  line  in  the  Duchy  of  Brunswick,  the 
Luneburg-Celle  and  Calenberg- Hanover  branches  of  the  “  new 
Ltineburg  ”  line,  and  the  comparatively  unimportant  Dukes  of 
Brunswick-Bevern,  a  cadet  branch  of  the  “  new  Wolfenbiittels.” 
At  this  time  George  William  of  Luneburg-Celle  had  only  a 
daughter,  the  ill-fated  Sophia  Dorothea,  while  his  brother  Ernest 
Augustus  of  Calenberg- Hanover  had  only  one  son,  George 
Lewis,  afterwards  George  I  of  Great  Britain.  A  marriage 
between  these  two  was  therefore  the  natural  method  of 
giving  effect  to  the  principle  of  indivisibility  adopted  by  the 
Liineburg  line  in  1592,  and  in  November  1682  the  wedding 
took  place,  Ernest  Augustus  having  been  recognised  two  years 
previously  by  the  Estates  of  Hanover  as  the  destined  successor 
of  George  William.  The  will  of  Ernest  Augustus,  now 
“  published  by  anticipation,”  laid  down  as  the  perpetual  law  of 
the  family  the  principles  of  indivisibility  and  primogeniture. 
This  arrangement  was  ratified  by  the  Emperor  in  1683  and 
duly  came  into  force  on  the  death  (1705)  of  George  William, 
undisturbed  by  the  tragedy  of  the  unlucky  Sophia  Dorothea 
(1694).1 

But  before  this  union  of  Luneburg-Celle  and  Calenberg- 
Hanover,  the  dignity  so  ardently  desired  by  the  Guelphs  as  the 
consummation  of  their  improved  position  had  been  acquired  by 
Ernest  Augustus.  In  the  necessities  of  the  Emperor  the 
Guelphs  found  a  lever  by  which  to  lift  themselves  into  the 
Electoral  College.  Austria,  occupied  simultaneously  with  the 
recovery  of  Hungary  from  the  Turks  and  the  defence  of 
Western  Germany  against  Louis  XIV,  was  in  sore  need  of  the 
considerable  military  force  of  which  they  could  dispose ; 
and  when,  in  1692,  Leopold  found  that  the  Duke  of  Hanover 

1  In  1689  the  Saxe-Lauenberg  line,  ruling  the  duchy  of  that  name  on  the  right 
bank  of  the  Elbe  above  Hamburg,  had  become  extinct ;  and,  despite  the  opposition 
of  several  other  claimants,  among  them  John  George  ill  of  Saxony,  the  Guelphs 
managed  to  secure  possession  of  this  valuable  district,  their  right  to  which  received 
Imperial  recognition  in  1716.  Cf.  Z.S.  ii.  107, 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


47 


was  discussing  with  Sweden,  with  the  Bishop  of  Munster,  and 
with  the  malcontent  Elector  of  Saxony 1  the  formation  of  a 
“  third  party  ”  within  the  Empire  for  the  purpose  of  forcing 
the  Emperor  to  come  to  terms  with  France,  he  had  to  give 
way.  In  March  1692  was  signed  the  “  Electoral  Compact,” 
by  which  the  Emperor  conferred  the  Electoral  dignity  on 
Ernest  Augustus  and  his  sons  in  return  for  considerable 
military  assistance  both  on  the  Rhine  and  on  the  Danube. 

The  promotion  of  Ernest  Augustus  was  received  not  with 
acclamations  but  with  a  chorus  of  protests,  from  the  Electors 
jealous  at  the  admission  of  an  upstart  into  their  ranks,  from 
the  Princes  furious  with  the  lost  leader  who  had  deserted  them 
to  gain  the  very  privileges  he  had  been  foremost  in  attacking. 
However,  by  October  1692,  Bavaria,  Brandenburg,  Mayence 
and  Saxony  had  recognised  the  promotion,  and  most  of  the 
other  states  of  Germany  followed  suit  before  very  long.  At 
the  Congress  of  Ryswick  the  European  Powers  recognised 
Earnest  Augustus  as  an  Elector,  and  at  length,  in  1708,  three 
years  after  the  union  of  Celle  and  Hanover  and  ten  years 
after  the  death  of  Ernest  Augustus  (1698),  his  son  George 
obtained  formal  admission  into  the  Electoral  College.  In  1714 
he  succeeded  his  cousin  Anne  as  King  of  England,  and  from 
henceforward  the  fortunes  of  Hanover  were  destined  to  be 
affected  by  events  on  the  Ganges  and  Mississippi,  and  by  com¬ 
mercial  quarrels  in  East  and  West  Indies.  To  England  also 
the  connection  was  a  doubtful  advantage,  though  in  many 
respects  the  Electorate  compared  less  unfavourably  with  its 
ruler’s  new  dominions  than  is  usually  assumed.  If  its  popula¬ 
tion  was  only  a  little  over  a  half  a  million  as  against  the  six 
millions  of  England  and  Wales,  and  its  revenue  only  £300,000 
as  against  £6, 000,000,  the  Hanoverian  army  was  but  little 
smaller  than  the  joint  establishment  of  3  1 ,000  men  maintained  in 
Great  Britain,  Ireland  and  the  “  plantations.”  Compared  with 
the  territories  of  their  German  neighbours,  those  of  the  Guelphs 
were  fairly  extensive,  amounting  to  about  8500  square  miles; 
but  they  were  neither  very  populous  nor  very  rich.  Moorlands 
and  sandy  wastes  formed  a  very  large  portion  of  the  Electorate, 
which  contained  very  few  towns  of  any  size,  and  was  mainly 
agricultural,  except  for  a  few  mining  villages.  Economically 
and  socially  alike  the  country  was  somewhat  backward,  its  laws 

1  John  George  iv,  o.s.p.  1694. 


48  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


and  system  of  government  being  mainly  mediaeval,  local 
Estates  retained  enough  vitality  to  prevent  centralisation  with¬ 
out  being  themselves  efficient  or  energetic,  while  the  peasantry 
were  in  a  state  of  feudal  subjugation  and  were  extremely 
ignorant. 

Outside  the  Electoral  College  the  thirty-three  ecclesiastical 
members  of  the  College  of  Princes  merit  some  attention.  One 
of  the  Archbishoprics,  Magdeburg,  had  passed  into  the 
possession  of  Brandenburg  in  1680;  the  only  other  one, 
Salzburg,  though  nearly  a  fifth  larger  in  area  than  any  of  the 
three  Electorates,1  consisted  mainly  of  wild  and  unproductive 
mountainous  country,  and  except  in  the  river  valleys  its 
population  was  scanty.2  Except  that  its  holder  presided  in 
the  College  of  Princes  alternately  with  Austria  one  hears  little 
of  it.  Of  the  Bishoprics,  Trent  (1650  square  miles,  147,000 
inhabitants)  was  chiefly  important  from  its  position  between 
Austria  and  Italy;  Bamberg  (1400  and  180,000)  and  Wurz¬ 
burg  (2100  and  250,000),  which  were  situated  in  the  fertile 
valley  of  the  Main,  were  richer  and  more  populous  than  the 
average;  Liege  (2300  and  220,000),  also  wealthy  and  popu¬ 
lous,  was  still  part  of  the  Empire,  and  was  generally  held  in 
common  with  Cologne,  as  was  sometimes  Munster  also.  This, 
the  largest  and  most  populous  of  all  the  ecclesiastical  Princi¬ 
palities  of  Germany,  its  area  being  4800  square  miles  and  its 
population  380,000  persons,  is  less  prominent  in  the  eighteenth 
century  than  it  had  been  in  the  last  half  of  the  previous 
century  when  ruled  by  that  most  unepiscopal  but  energetic 
prelate,  Christopher  Bernard  von  Galen,  diplomatist,  politician 
and  warrior  rather  than  ecclesiastic.  Of  the  secularised 
Bishoprics  of  North  Germany,  Osnabriick  (1200  square  miles 
and  136,000  people),  the  largest  of  those  so  treated,  was  not 
wholly  lost  to  the  Roman  Catholics,  as  it  had  been  arranged 
at  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  that  it  should  be  alternately  in  the 
hands  of  a  Roman  Catholic  and  of  a  Protestant  “  Adminis¬ 
trator.”  For  the  rest,  the  College  of  Princes  included  the 
Grand  Masters  of  the  Teutonic  Order  and  of  the  Knights 
of  Malta,  the  Bishops  of  Augsburg,  Basle,  Brixen,  Chur, 

1  It  was  over  3700  square  miles,  Cologne  being  3100,  Mayence  and  Treves  both 
under  2700. 

2  The  figures  given  in  Z.S.  (ii.  181)  are  Mayence  330,000  inhabitants,  Treves 
270,000,  Cologne  240,000,  Salzburg  190,000. 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


49 


Constance,  Eichstadt,  Freisingen,  Fulda,  Passau,  Ratisbon, 
Spires  and  Worms,  and  several  Abbots. 

Now  that  the  Guelphs  had  attained  to  Electoral  rank,  the 
chief  lay  member  of  the  College  of  Princes  was  perhaps  the 
Duke  of  Wiirtemberg.  This  South  German  Protestant  state 
is  in  some  ways  the  most  interesting  of  all  the  minor  Princi¬ 
palities,  since  it  possessed  what  most  of  its  fellows  lacked,  a 
written  constitution,  established  in  1514  when  Duke  Ulrich 
had  concluded  with  his  subjects  the  Treaty  of  Tubingen.  In 
character  it  was  somewhat  democratic,  for  in  Wiirtemberg 
there  was  hardly  any  aristocracy,  most  of  the  local  nobles  of 
Swabia  being  Imperial  Knights,  consequently  the  burgher 
element  in  the  Estates  was  unusually  powerful.  The  Estates 
owed  their  escape  from  suppression  to  the  fact  that  the  con¬ 
stitution  gave  them  the  power  of  the  purse,  and  this  they  had 
managed  to  retain,  so  that  the  Duke  found  his  authority  much 
restricted  by  that  of  the  Standing  Committee  of  the  Estates, 
and  thus  Wiirtemberg  was  a  notable  exception  to  the  general 
rule  of  the  establishment  of  princely  absolutism  on  the  ruins 
of  local  autonomy.  Eberhard  III  (1623— 1674)  had  lost  his 
dominions  in  the  Thirty  Years’  War  but  had  regained  them  in 
1648,  when  the  little  Principality  of  Montbeliard  (Mompelgard) 
passed  to  another  branch  of  the  family  on  the  extinction  of 
which  (1723)  it  reverted  to  the  senior  line.  Eberhard  had 
made  great  and  not  unsuccessful  efforts  to  heal  the  wounds 
which  the  ravages  of  the  war  had  inflicted  on  his  dominions, 
while  the  policy  of  supporting  Austria  which  he  had  consistently 
followed  was  continued  by  his  successors.  In  1715,  Wtirtem- 
berg  was  under  the  rule  of  Duke  Eberhard  Louis  (1677— 1733), 
a  man  of  considerable  vigour  and  capacity,  who  had  managed 
to  obtain  from  the  Estates  the  establishment  of  a  small  standing 
army,  which  enabled  him  to  contest  the  authority  of  the 
Standing  Committee  and  to  be  more  tyrannical  and  extravagant 
than  any  of  his  predecessors.  He  had  been  able  to  do  this 
because  the  Wilrtembergers  had  found  that  if  the  strict  control 
the  Standing  Committee  exercised  over  the  Duke  enabled  his 
subjects  to  escape  being  sacrificed  to  the  caprices  of  a  ruling 
sovereign  supported  by  military  force,  it  also  exposed  them  to 
injuries  at  the  hands  of  their  neighbours.  Das  gute  alte  Recht 
was  no  defence  against  the  aggressions  of  Louis  XIV,  and 
Wiirtemberg  suffered  almost  as  heavily  in  the  wars  of 
4 


So  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


1688-1699  and  1 702-1 7 14  as  in  the  Thirty  Years’  War 
itself.  Hence  the  permanent  army  which  the  Duke  was 
allowed  to  establish  for  the  better  defence  of  the  3500  square 
miles  and  the  660,000  inhabitants  who  owned  his  sway. 

Between  Wiirtemberg  and  the  Rhine  lay  Baden,  divided 
between  the  two  branches  of  Baden-Baden  and  Baden-Durlach, 
ruled  respectively  in  1715  by  Louis  George  (1707— 1761),  son 
and  successor  of  that  “  Louis  of  Baden  ”  who  had  played  so 
prominent  a  part  in  the  War  of  the  Spanish  Succession  as  the 
colleague  of  Marlborough  and  Eugene,  and  by  Charles  William 
of  Durlach  (1709— 1738),  chiefly  noteworthy  for  having  been, 
like  his  cousin,  a  warm  supporter  of  Austria  in  the  war  of 
1 702-1 7  1 4,  but  not  over  successful  as  a  commander.  Of  the 
two,  Baden-Baden  was  somewhat  the  larger,  having  an  area 
of  770  square  miles  against  640  and  94,000  inhabitants 
against  73,000.  Both  branches  of  the  family  were  Protestants, 
as  were  also  the  great  majority  of  their  subjects. 

The  territories  of  the  House  of  Hesse  resembled  those  of 
their  Northern  neighbours,  the  Guelphs,  in  being  much  sub¬ 
divided.  The  two  main  branches  of  the  family  sprang  from 
the  quadruple  division  which  had  followed  the  death  of 
Landgrave  Philip  the  Proud  in  1567.  Two  of  the  lines  then 
established  had  died  out  since  then,  Hesse-Rheinfels  in  1583, 
Hesse-Marburg  in  1604,  the  extinction  of  the  last-named 
giving  rise  to  a  long  contest  for  its  territorities  between  the 
surviving  branches,  Hesse-Cassel  and  Hesse-Darmstadt.  This 
had  been  decided  at  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  on  the  whole  in 
favour  of  Hesse-Cassel,  whose  claims  had  been  so  warmly 
pressed  by  France  and  Sweden  that  the  Emperor  had  been 
forced  to  cancel  his  original  award  in  favour  of  his  constant 
adherent  Hesse-Darmstadt.  Hesse-Cassel  had  also  received 
the  Abbey  of  Hersfeld  and  part  of  the  County  of  Schaumburg, 
while  its  ruler,  Landgrave  William  VI  (1637— 1677),  bad  put 
a  stop  to  all  chance  of  further  partitions  by  establishing  the 
rule  of  primogeniture  and  indivisibility  (1650).  His  son  and 
successor,  Landgrave  Charles  I,  who  was  ruling  Hesse-Cassel 
at  the  time  of  the  Peace  of  Utrecht,  merits  certain  attention  as 
one  of  the  first  German  Princes  to  turn  his  dominions  into  an 
establishment  for  the  production  and  supply  of  mercenary 
jtroops.  He  had  raised  soldiers  on  a  definitely  and  systemati¬ 
cally  organised  plan,  which  enabled  him  to  dispose  freely  of 


a 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


5i 


considerable  force  of  excellent  troops  and  thereby  to  earn  large 
subsidies  from  Austria  and  the  Maritime  Powers,  which  sub¬ 
sidies,  to  his  credit  be  it  noted,  he  had  spent  on  his  country 
rather  than  on  himself.  One  of  the  German  Princes  who 
profited  by  the  expulsion  of  the  Huguenots  to  welcome  them 
to  Cassel,  to  the  great  benefit  of  both ,  sides  to  the  bargain, 
Landgrave  Charles  had  not  adhered  to  the  French  alliance 
which  had  proved  so  useful  to  his  family  in  1648.  Alarmed 
by  the  aggressions  of  Louis  XIV,  he  had  joined  the  so-called 
Magdeburg  Concert  of  1688  and  had  been  one  of  the  first 
German  Princes  to  join  the  Grand  Alliance,  while  Hessian  troops 
had  done  excellent  service  under  Marlborough  and  Eugene. 

Considerably  smaller  and  less  populous  than  Hesse-Cassel 
it  had  1750  square  miles,  mostly  South  of  the  Main,  and 
180,000  inhabitants  as  against  an  area  of  2850  square  miles 
and  a  population  of  330,000 — Hesse-Darmstadt  followed  a 
somewhat  different  policy.  Like  the  Guelphs,  it  had  been 
consistently  Lutheran  and  consistently  loyal  to  the  Emperor  ; 
whereas  Hesse-Cassel  was  strongly  and  aggressively  Calvinist 
and,  though  loyal  enough  from  1688  to  1715,  had  at  one  time 
been  closely  allied  with  France  and  Sweden.  Its  ruler  in  1715, 
Landgrave  Ernest  Louis  (1678— 1739),  was  no  exception  to 
the  traditions  of  the  family  ;  the  son  of  Louis  VI,  the  founder 
of  the  University  of  Giessen,  he  had  been  a  member  of  the 
Grand  Alliance  and  had,  like  his  cousin  at  Cassel,  provided 
mercenaries  for  the  Maritime  Powers.  Of  the  cadet  branches 
of  the  House  of  Hesse  those  of  Hesse-Rheinfels  (new),  Hesse- 
Rotenburg  and  Hesse-Eschwege  sprang  from  Cassel ;  the 
Princes  of  Hesse-Homburg  were  an  offshoot  of  the  Darmstadt 
line  dating  from  1596. 

But  of  all  the  families  of  Germany,  perhaps  the  most  sub¬ 
divided  was  that  of  the  Wittelsbachs  ;  for  in  addition  to  the  two 
Electors  of  that  house,  it  possessed  several  members  of  the 
College  of  Princes,  their  territories  lying  for  the  most  part  in 
the  Upper  Rhenish  and  Bavarian  Circles.  Of  these  lines  and 
of  the  Electoral  branches  the  common  ancestor  was  Stephen, 
third  son  of  Robert  III,  Elector  Palatine  from  1398  to  1410. 
On  Stephen’s  death  in  1459  his  dominions  had  been  divided 
between  his  sons  Frederick  and  Louis,  ancestors  respectively  of 
the  Simmern  and  Zweibrticken  lines,  the  former  of  which  had 
succeeded  to  the  Electorate  in  1559  and  had  held  it  till  1685. 


52  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


A  cadet  branch  of  the  Zweibriicken  line  had  been  established 
at  Veldenz  in  1514,  and  on  the  death  of  Wolfgang  of  Zwei- 
briicken  (1569)  his  lands  were  divided  afresh,  three  lines  being 
thus  established,  the  Birkenfeld,  the  Neuburg  and  the  Zwei- 
brticken.  Yet  another  branch  was  founded  in  1614  when  the 
lands  of  Philip  William  of  Neuburg  were  divided  between  his 
sons  Wolfgang  William,  who  took  Neuburg,  and  Augustus,  who 
received  Sulzbach.1  In  1715  the  Neuburg  branch  had  suc¬ 
ceeded  to  the  Palatinate,2  Sulzbach 3  was  ruled  by  Theodore 
(1708— 1732),  Veldenz4  had  passed  to  the  Elector  Palatine 
on  the  death  of  Duke  Leopold  Louis  in  1 694,  Birkenfeld 5 
was  under  Christian  II  (1654— 1717).  Zweibriicken  had  been 
divided  by  John  I  ( ob .  1604)  between  his  three  sons,  but,  of  the 
three  branches  thus  established,  only  the  Kleeberg  line  survived 
in  1715.  To  this,  therefore,  the  Zweibriicken  lands  belonged,  it 
being  represented  by  Charles  XII  of  Sweden,  the  great-grandson 
of  John  Casimir  of  Kleeberg  by  Christina  of  Sweden,  daughter 
of  Charles  IX.  On  his  death  in  1718  the  Zweibriicken  lands 
passed  to  a  cousin,  Gustavus  Leopold,  from  whom  they  passed 
in  turn  to  Christian  III  of  Birkenfeld  (1 7  1 7—1 7 3 5)  in  1731. 
Thus  the  multiplication  of  the  Wittelsbach  branches  was 
gradually  tending  to  be  somewhat  simplified ;  but  these 
infinitesimal  subdivisions  deprived  the  family  of  the  political 
weight  it  might  have  enjoyed  had  all  its  lands  been  united 
under  one  ruler.  But  even  then  they  were  so  much  scattered 
that  even  a  common  ruler  could  hardly  have  given  coherence 
and  cohesion  to  little  parcels  of  territory  distributed  about  on 
the  Lower  Rhine  (Jiilich  and  Berg),  the  Moselle,  and  between 
the  Danube  and  the  Main. 

No  other  family  in  South  Germany  is  important  enough 
to  merit  special  mention  ;  but  as  one  passes  Northward  from  the 
Bavarian  and  Swabian  Circles  to  the  Franconian  and  Upper 
Saxon,  one  meets  at  Anspach  and  Baireuth  cadet  branches  of 
the  Hohenzollern.  These  Margraviates  had  come  into  the 
hands  of  Elector  Joachim  Frederick  in  1603,  when  the 

1  Neuburg  and  Sulzbach  had  belonged  to  the  Landshut  branch  of  the  Bavarian 
Wittelsbachs  which  had  become  extinct  in  1503,  whereupon  a  struggle  for  their 
inheritance  occurred  between  the  Zweibriicken  line  and  Duke  Albert  11  of  Munich : 
the  matter  was  settled  by  a  compromise,  which  left  Neuburg  and  Sulzbach  to  the 
Zweibriicken.  2  Cf.  p.  44. 

J  In  the  Upper  Palatinate,  which  it  divided  in  half. 

4  On  the  Moselle  just  below  Treves.  5  Just  to  the  East  of  Treves. 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


53 


Culmbach  line  established  in  them  by  the  Dispositio  Achillea 
of  Elector  Albert  Achilles  (1473)  had  died  out.  Joachim 
Frederick  had  bestowed  them  on  his  younger  brothers,  whose 
descendants,  William  Frederick  of  Anspach  (1702— 1723, 
brother  of  Caroline,  wife  of  George  11  of  England)  and 
George  William  of  Baireuth  (1 7 1 2-1 726),  were  ruling  them 
in  1715.  Their  joint  area  amounted  to  about  2600  square 
miles  and  their  population  to  over  360,000,  rather  above  the 
average  for  the  whole  country,  although  no  town  of  much  size 
was  included  within  their  boundaries.  The  main  importance 
of  these  Franconian  Hohenzollerns  lay  in  the  fact  that  they 
provided  their  cousins  at  Brandenburg  with  a  possible  excuse 
for  interfering  in  South  Germany,  and  of  obtaining  a  foothold 
South  of  the  Main  by  the  annexation  of  these  Margraviates. 

If  the  map  of  South-Western  Germany  may  be  described 
as  a  mosaic  of  petty  states,  that  of  Thuringia  easily  bears  off 
the  palm  for  bewildering  intricacy  of  subdivision.  What 
with  the  Princes  of  Reuss,  of  Schwarzburg,  of  the  various 
branches  of  the  Anhalt  family,  and  the  Counties  of  Mansfeld 
and  Hohenstein,  Thuringian  geography  would  have  been  com¬ 
plicated  enough,  even  if  all  the  territories  of  the  Ernestine 
Saxons  had  been  united  under  one  ruler.  But  the  Ernestine 
Wettins  surpassed  even  their  Albertine  cousins  in  the  sub¬ 
division  of  their  territories  and  in  the  number  of  their  cadet 
branches;  of  these  the  most  important  were  Saxe- Coburg, 
subdivided  at  the  death  of  the  famous  Ernest  the  Pious 
(1605— 1675)  between  his  six  sons,  rulers  respectively  of 
Saxe  -  Gotha,  Saxe  -  Coburg,  Saxe  -  Hildburghausen,  Saxe- 
Meinungen,  Saxe  -  Saalfeld  and  Saxe  -  Eisenberg,  and  Saxe- 
Weimar,  whose  Dukes  had  been  much  more  moderate  in 
the  creation  of  minor  principalities,  Saxe-Eisenach  being  the 
only  offshoot  enjoying  a  separate  existence  in  1 7 1 5 . 
Together  the  territories  of  the  Ernestine  Saxons  amounted  to 
nearly  2000  square  miles,  peopled  by  some  360,000  persons, 
the  joint  possessions  of  the  Albertine  line  covering  an  area  of 
15,000  square  miles  and  having  a  population  of  1,700,000. 

After  the  intricacies  of  Thuringia  the  affairs  of  Mecklenburg 
seem  almost  simple.  A  disputed  succession  to  the  territories 
of  Gustavus  of  Mecklenburg- Gtistrow,  the  last  of  the  line 
(oh.  1695),  had  given  rise  to  certain  complications,  but  had 
been  finally  settled  by  the  Treaty  of  Hamburg  in  1701 ,  which 


54  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


established  the  two  lines  of  Mecklenburg-Schwerin,  with  which 
went  Giistrow  itself  and  the  vote,  and  Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 
to  which  was  given  the  secularised  Bishopric  of  Ratzeburg. 
By  one  of  the  most  remarkable  provisions  even  in  that  country 
of  constitutional  anomalies  and  curiosities,  when  Mecklenburg 
had  originally  been  divided  between  the  Dukes  of  Schwerin 
and  of  Giistrow  the  Estates  of  the  two  divisions  had  remained 
united,1  with  the  result  that  the  Estates  had  been  able  to 
utilise  the  division  for  their  own  benefit  and  to  defend  their 
aristocratic  privileges  against  their  Dukes  with  no  small 
success.2  It  might  have  been  expected  from  the  extensive 
seaboard  which  Mecklenburg  possessed  that  she  might  have 
risen  to  influence  and  importance  by  means  of  commercial 
and  maritime  development,  but  the  cession  of  Wismar  to 
Sweden  in  1648  and  the  admission  of  Sweden’s  claim  to  the 
tolls  ( Licenteri )  of  the  other  ports  of  the  country  had  spoilt  this 
chance,  and  Mecklenburg  remained  a  merely  agrarian  country, 
doomed  to  poverty  and  backwardness  by  the  unfruitful  char¬ 
acter  of  her  sandy  soil,  thinly  populated,  and  of  little  weight 
in  German  affairs.  In  1715  the  300,000  inhabitants  of  the 
5000  square  miles  of  Mecklenburg-Schwerin  were  ruled  by 
Charles  Leopold  (1713— 1747),  soon  to  make  himself  im¬ 
portant  by  the  complications  introduced  into  Baltic  affairs 
by  his  attempt  to  establish  a  more  autocratic  administrative 
system  in  his  dominions.  Mecklenburg  -  Strelitz,  not  more 
than  a  fifth  of  the  size  or  population  of  Schwerin,  was  under 
Adolphus  Frederick  II  (1708-1749),  a  prince  of  no  particular 
importance. 

North-Westward  of  Mecklenburg  lies  a  land  whose  story 
involves  some  of  the  very  worst  complications  in  all  German 
history.  To  get  a  clear  idea  of  the  relations  between 
Schleswig-Holstein,  Denmark  and  the  Holy  Roman  Empire, 
it  is  necessary  to  go  back  even  beyond  the  extinction  of 
the  old  line  of  the  Kings  of  Denmark  in  1448,  when  the 
Danish  crown  was  offered  to  Adolphus  VII  of  Schleswig- 
Holstein,  a  member  of  the  Schauenburg  family  and  a  subject 
of  the  Emperor  as  Count  of  Holstein.  The  connection 
between  Holstein,  which  admittedly  formed  part  of  the  Holy 

1  Erdmannsdorffer,  i.  73. 

2  The  Estates  were  almost  wholly  composed  of  the  local  nobles,  the  peasantry 
being  serfs,  and  the  burghers  devoid  of  any  political  power. 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


55 


Roman  Empire,  and  Schleswig,  which  no  less  certainly  did  not, 
had  arisen  through  the  cession  of  Schleswig  to  Count  Gerhard 
of  Holstein  (1386)  to  be  held  as  a  fief  of  the  Danish  Crown. 
After  various  efforts  by  Denmark  to  recover  immediate  pos¬ 
session  of  Schleswig,  it  had  been  left  in  the  hands  of  Adolphus 
of  Schauenburg  as  a  hereditary  fief  when  Christopher  of 
Bavaria  had  become  King  of  Denmark  (1439).  When  offered 
the  Danish  crown  in  1448,  Adolphus  had  declined  it,  but  had 
suggested  as  a  suitable  choice  his  nephew,  Christian  of  Olden¬ 
burg,  who  had  then  been  offered  the  crown  and  had  promptly 
accepted  it.  In  1459,  Adolphus  died  childless,  and  Christian 
at  once  laid  claim  to  Holstein  as  well  as  to  Schleswig,  claiming 
both  as  the  nearest  male  heir  of  his  uncle  and  Schleswig  also 
as  King  of  Denmark,  the  overlord  to  whom  the  fief  should 
revert  on  the  extinction  of  its  holders.  The  Estates  of  the 
two  provinces  thereupon  chose  him  as  their  ruler,  but  on 
the  express  conditions  that  they  should  be  free  for  the  future 
to  select  any  of  his  descendants  as  their  ruler,  and  should  not 
have  to  take  the  King  of  Denmark. 

The  next  landmark  in  the  history  of  the  Duchies  was  the 
division  of  Schleswig-Holstein  made  by  Christian  III  of 
Denmark  (1534-1558)  in  1544,  when  the  Duchies1  were 
shared  between  Christian  III  and  his  brothers.  This  ultimately 
established  two  separate  branches  of  the  House  of  Oldenburg, 
the  Gliickstadt  or  royal  line,  and  the  Gottorp  or  ducal.  Un¬ 
fortunately  for  all  concerned  the  division  was  not  geographi¬ 
cally  symmetrical,  but  the  possessions  of  the  two  branches 
were  irretrievably  intermingled,  so  that  the  Gliickstadt  line 
not  merely  ruled  the  Kingdom  of  Denmark,  but  also  held 
portions  of  the  Duchies,  in  virtue  of  which  the  King  of 
Denmark  enjoyed  a  seat  in  the  College  of  Princes.  As  was 
only  natural  the  relations  between  the  two  branches  were  not, 
as  a  rule,  of  the  most  friendly,  for  it  was  the  constant  endeavour 
of  the  Gottorp  line  to  throw  off  altogether  the  ill-defined 
suzerainty  which  Denmark  continued  to  assert  and  to  attempt 
to  make  more  definite  and  complete.  To  further  their  end  the 
Dukes  of  Holstein-Gottorp  are  always  to  be  found  in  alliance 
with  Denmark’s  principal  enemies,  the  Swedish  Kings  of  the 
Vasa  family,  in  whom  they  found  willing  protectors  against 

1  Holstein  had  been  erected  into  a  Duchy  in  1474,  with  a  seat  in  the  College  of 
Princes. 


56  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Danish  aggression.  Thus  in  the  Baltic  wars  of  the  seventeenth 
century  this  debatable  land  between  Denmark  and  Germany 
was  both  the  scene  of  hostilities  and  the  prize  of  victory,  and 
not  till  Sweden’s  day  of  greatness  had  come  to  an  end  at 
Pultowa  and  Friedrichshald  1  did  Denmark  achieve  her  prin¬ 
cipal  object  by  the  annexation  of  Schleswig  (1721).  Mean¬ 
while  the  successful  coup  d'etat  of  1660  in  Denmark  had 
introduced  a  new  complication  by  making  that  kingdom  an 
absolute  and  hereditary  monarchy  with  female  succession, 
while  in  Schleswig-Holstein  the  Salic  law  still  prevailed.  In 
1715  the  Duke  of  Holstein-Gottorp  was  a  minor,  Charles 
Frederick,  who  had  succeeded  to  the  Duchies  in  1703,  his 
father  Frederick  IV  having  been  killed  when  fighting  for 
Charles  XII  at  Klissow :  the  actual  government  of  the  Duchies 
was  therefore  in  the  hands  of  Christian  Augustus  of  Holstein- 
Eutin,  brother  of  the  late  Duke  and  head  of  the  principal  cadet 
branch  of  the  family. 

But  in  addition  to  the  portions  of  Schleswig-Holstein 
which  the  Danish  Kings  had  managed  to  keep,  and  which 
qualified  them  to  rank  as  Princes  of  the  Empire,  they  held 
other  and  larger  territories  in  Northern  Germany.  The 
branch  of  the  House  of  Oldenburg  which  had  retained 
possession  of  the  ancestral  Duchy  on  the  West  of  the  Weser 
when  Denmark  came  into  the  possession  of  the  family,  had 
become  extinct  in  1667,  and  Oldenburg,  with  its  appanages 
of  Delmenhorst  and  Jever,  had  passed  to  the  King  of  Denmark, 
a  connection  being  thus  established  which  was  to  last  over  a 
hundred  years.  About  half  the  size  of  Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 
Oldenburg  was  even  more  sparsely  populated,  having  barely 
forty  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile,  and  made  practically 
no  use  of  the  possession  of  a  seaboard  to  develop  as  a 
maritime  state.  Possibly  its  Danish  rulers  would  not  have 
cared  to  see  the  Duchy  embarking  on  such  a  career,  but  it  had 
no  industries  on  which  to  base  any  attempt  at  commercial 
enterprise.  Be  that  as  it  may,  Danish  rule,  however,  though 
mild  and  not  oppressive,  was  never  popular  in  Oldenburg  and 
the  termination  of  the  connection  was  welcomed  when  it  came 
by  the  inhabitants  of  the  Duchy.2 

Among  his  fellow-members  of  the  College  of  Princes,  the 
King  of  Denmark  found  his  great  rival  in  the  Baltic,  the  King 
1  Cf.  Chapter  III.  2  Cf.  Chapter  XVII. 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


57 


of  Sweden.  In  1715  Sweden’s  hold  on  the  possessions  ceded 
to  her  at  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  was  all  but  shaken  off ;  the 
Danes  had  occupied  Bremen  and  Verden,  Pomerania  had  been 
overrun  by  the  joint  forces  of  Prussia,  Saxony  -  Poland  and 
Hanover,  and  Stralsund  was  closely  beset;1  but  technically 
these  portions  of  the  Empire  were  Swedish  still,  and  even  after 
the  conclusion  of  that  group  of  treaties  of  which  the  Peace  of 
Nystad  is  the  most  important,  part  of  Western  Pomerania 
with  Riigen  and  Wismar  remained  to  the  successors  of 
Charles  XII,  who  must  therefore  be  reckoned  among  the 
Princes  of  Germany. 

But  while  Sweden’s  constitutional  relations  with  the 
Empire  were  clear  enough,  the  same  can  hardly  be  alleged 
of  the  connection  between  the  German  Reich  and  the  other 
foreign  power  which  had  taken  a  leading  part  in  the  Thirty 
Years’  War.  In  1648,  France  had  received  all  the  Imperial 
rights  over  the  three  Bishoprics,  Metz,  Toul  and  Verdun,  of 
which  she  had  been  in  actual  possession  since  1552,  and  also 
over  the  Landgraviates  of  Upper  and  Lower  Alsace,  the 
Sundgau  and  the  town  of  Breisach,  together  with  the  provincial 
prefecture  ( Landvogtei )  over  the  ten  Imperial  cities  of  Alsace, 
the  so-called  “  Decapolis.”  But  while  the  three  Bishoprics,  the 
Sundgau  and  Upper  and  Lower  Alsace  had  been  ceded  in  full 
sovereignty,  this  had  not  been  the  case  with  the  “  Decapolis.” 
It  would  almost  seem  as  if  the  uncertainty  must  have  been 
deliberate,  that  the  clauses  of  the  Treaty  of  Munster  dealing 
with  the  matter  (Nos.  73,  74  and  87)  were  purposely  worded 
so  vaguely  that  both  parties  could  interpret  them  as  they 
wished.2  Moreover,  Alsace,  like  other  parts  of  the  Empire, 
was  divided  among  many  different  rulers  whose  lands  were 
inextricably  confused,  the  possessions  of  the  Hapsburgs  being 
mixed  up  with  territory  belonging  to  the  Bishoprics  of  Worms, 
Spires,  Strassburg  and  Basle,  to  temporal  Princes  like  Zwei- 
briicken,  Baden  and  the  Elector  Palatine,  to  say  no  more  of 
Counts  and  Imperial  Knights.  Formally  these  districts  had 
not  been  ceded  to  France.  Practically,  however,  they  soon 
came  to  be  as  good  as  French ;  for  though  the  Princes  of  the 
Empire  who  owned  them  were  allowed  to  levy  taxes  from 
them,  to  nominate  officials  to  govern  them  and  to  collect 
feudal  dues  and  other  items  of  revenue,  they  were  not 
1  Cf.  Chapter  III.  2  Cf.  Erdmannsdorffer,  i.  pp.  39~4 7* 


58  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


permitted  to  keep  soldiers  in  these  districts ;  any  fortresses 
were  occupied  by  French  troops,  only  natives  might  be 
appointed  to  official  posts,  and  the  French  taxed  these  districts 
just  as  they  did  those  directly  subject  to  the  King  of  France. 
The  towns  of  the  Decapolis  chose  their  own  magistrates,  and 
enjoyed  local  autonomy  of  a  sort  with  exemption  from  some 
taxes  ;  but  a  royal  official  was  established  in  each  of  them 
to  look  after  the  interests  of  the  King  of  France,  and  if  the 
nominal  connection  with  the  Empire  still  existed,  the  events 
of  Louis  xiv’s  reign  had  left  it  hardly  even  a  name.1  The 
work  of  the  Chambres  de  Reunion  had  been  in  part  undone  at 
Ryswick  and  Utrecht,  but  Strassburg,  the  prize  of  the  most 
flagrant  of  all  the  “  acts  of  power  ”  committed  by  Louis, 
was  not  recovered  for  Germany. 

Westward  of  Alsace  lay  yet  another  portion  of  the  Empire 
which  was  rapidly  ceasing  to  be  German.  Lorraine,  long  a 
debatable  land  between  France  and  Germany,  was  in  1715 
still  in  the  hands  of  the  descendants  of  Anthony  the  Good,  the 
elder  brother  of  the  first  Duke  of  Guise.2  Situated  as  it 
was,  Lorraine  had  inevitably  been  involved  in  the  complicated 
relations  of  France,  Spain  and  the  malcontent  French  nobility. 
Seized  by  Richelieu  in  1634,  it  had  not  been  restored  to  its 
Duke,  Charles  III,  till  the  Peace  of  the  Pyrenees,  and  then 
France  had  reserved  the  right  of  free  passage  across  the  Duchy 
for  her  troops  ;  and  in  subsequent  wars  Lorraine  had  been  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  French.  Leopold  Joseph  (1690— 1729), 
its  ruler  in  1715,  had  regained  the  Duchy  at  the  Peace  of 
Ryswick,  subject  as  before  to  the  French  right  of  passage,  and 
during  the  Spanish  Succession  War  a  French  garrison  occupied 
Nancy,  though  the  neutrality  of  the  Duchy  was  on  the  whole 
maintained,  and  its  Duke  was  thus  able  to  apply  himself 
energetically  and  with  some  success  to  the  arduous  task  of 
restoring  order  and  prosperity  to  his  much  harassed  dominions. 

Of  the  remaining  members  of  the  College  of  Princes  but 
little  need  be  said.  Anthony  Ulrich  of  Brunswick-Wolfen- 
buttel,3  one  of  the  few  German  Princes  to  join  Louis  XIV 

1  This  information  was  derived  from  a  course  of  lectures  delivered  by  M.  Rodolphe 
Reuss  of  the  Ecole  des  Hautes  Etudes  at  Paris  in  1898. 

2  Claude,  ob.  1550. 

3  He  had  succeeded  in  adding  the  city  of  Brunswick  to  his  dominions  in  1671, 
and  in  1679  acquired  Thedinghausen  from  Sweden, 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


59 


in  1702,  when  he  had  been  promptly  suppressed  by  the 
Hanoverian  cousins  he  hated  so  bitterly,  had  died  in  1714; 
his  son  and  successor,  Augustus  William  (1 7 14—  1 73  1),  was 
a  man  of  little  note.  Anhalt,  divided  in  1603  between  the 
Bernberg,  Dessau,  Kothen  and  Zerbst  lines,  and  Aremberg 
had  had  Virilstimmen  before  1648,  but  the  Counts  of 
Henneberg  had  been  extinct  since  1583,  their  lands  had  been 
partitioned  between  the  various  Saxon  lines,  Saxe  -  Weimar 
and  the  Electoral  line  giving  the  vote  together.  The  vote 
formerly  held  by  Savoy  had  lapsed  through  long  disuse, 
that  of  Leuchtenberg  had  fallen  to  Bavaria,  that  of  Saxe- 
Lauenberg  to  Hanover.  But  the  College  of  Princes  had  from 
time  to  time  been  recruited  by  new  creations,  and  seven  new 
holders  of  Virilstimmen  had  appeared  in  1653  and  1654,  the 
Counts  of  Hohenzollern-Hechingen,  Nassau-Dillenberg  and 
Nassau- Hadamar,  the  Wildgrave  of  Salm,  Barons  Dietrichstein, 
Eggenberg  and  Lobkowitz,  while  subsequent  additions  had 
been  the  Counts  of  Auersberg  (1664),  East  Friesland  (1667), 
Fiirstenberg  (1667)  and  Schwarzenberg  (1674).1  Outside  the 
ranks  of  these  holders  of  individual  votes  were  many  other 
petty  Princes,  too  numerous  and  too  unimportant  for  indi¬ 
vidual  mention,  such  as  the  Counts  of  Waldeck,  Isenburg  and 
Hohenlohe,  who  were  only  represented  in  the  Diet  through 
the  Curiatstimmen. 

Yet  one  numerous  and  important  class  requires  descrip¬ 
tion,  the  Imperial  Knights,  the  rulers  of  the  very  pettiest 
states  in  all  the  mosaic  of  the  infinite  disunion  of  Germany. 
Lords  of  dominions  which,  as  a  rule,  consisted  of  but  a  village 
or  two,  their  position  in  the  Empire  approximated  in  some 
ways  to  the  condition  of  subjects  rather  than  of  Princes. 
They  had  no  footing  in  the  Diet,  not  even  a  solitary 
Curiatstimme  among  the  thousand  members  of  their  order. 
Indeed,  in  the  greater  part  of  the  Empire,  in  Austria,  in  Bavaria 
and  in  North  Germany,  the  lesser  nobles,  who  roughly  corre¬ 
sponded  to  the  Knights  in  position  and  in  the  size  of  their 
holdings,  had  already  been  reduced  to  the  footing  of  subjects. 
It  was  only  in  the  Southern  Circles  in  which  there  was  no  one 
predominant  Prince  that  the  Knights  were  numerous — in 
other  words,  that  the  lesser  nobility  had  managed  to  become 
and  remain  sovereigns. 

1  These  dates  are  those  of  the  definite  acquisition  of  the  Vinlstimvie . 


6o  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


But  they  were  sovereign  only  in  that,  holding  immediately 
of  the  Emperor,  they  enjoyed  rights  of  jurisdiction  and  taxa¬ 
tion  over  their  tenants,  and  were  not  subject  to  the  Princes 
in  whose  territories  their  dominions  were  enclosed.  If  the 
majority  of  the  petty  states  of  Germany  were  much  too  small 
to  be  capable  of  developing  that  active  political  life  which 
alone  could  justify  their  independent  existence,  much  more 
was  this  the  case  with  the  Knights.  Had  the  Princes  been 
allowed  to  put  a  summary  conclusion  to  the  indefensible 
independence  of  this  most  anomalous  class,  it  would  have 
been  a  great  boon  to  the  unfortunate  subjects  of  the  Knights, 
and  peace  and  order  would  have  been  much  advanced.  As 
it  was,  the  territories  of  the  Knights  were  as  a  rule  Alsatias, 
to  which  robbers  and  broken  men  of  every  description  com¬ 
monly  resorted.  The  robber  Knights  of  the  Middle  Ages  had 
disappeared,  but  things  were  still  pretty  bad,  and  no  useful 
purpose  was  served  by  this  independence.  Indeed,  it  was 
most  unfortunate  that  such  a  resident  nobility,  accustomed 
to  local  administration,  a  class  which  to  some  degree  might 
have  bridged  the  gap  between  Princes  and  subjects,  should 
have  been  so  completely  ineffective  for  good.  It  was  to 
the  Emperor  that  the  Knights  owed  their  security  against 
the  Princes.  To  him  they  were  of  importance  because 
the  tax  which  they  paid  him,  the  Char itiitiv sub  sidien, 
was  one  of  the  principal  sources  of  his  meagre  income.1 
It  was  their  affairs  which  provided  the  Imperial  law 
courts  with  the  bulk  of  their  business,  and  the  Knights 
were  almost  the  only  element  in  the  Empire  which, 
having  no  local  or  particularist  interests,  could  be  said  to 
be  members  of  the  Empire,  and  to  belong  to  it  only.  It 
might  have  been  thought  that  on  them  and  on  the  Cities  the 
Emperor  might  have  laid  the  foundations  of  a  more  national 
party  by  which  to  counteract  the  localism  of  the  Princes  ;  but 
the  Knights  were  too  weak  and  too  scattered  for  united 
action,  and  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  Hapsburgs  had  all 
but  abandoned  as  hopeless  the  struggle  against  particularism. 
The  Knights  had,  it  is  true,  an  organisation  of  their  own, 
a  Corpus  composed  of  the  “Knightly  Circles”  of  Franconia, 

1  The  Knights,  being  unrepresented  in  the  Diet,  always  refused  to  pay  the 
taxes  voted  by  the  Diet ;  nor  did  they  contribute  to  the  upkeep  of  the  Imperial 
Chamber. 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


61 


Swabia  and  the  Rhine,1  each  of  which  was  built  up  out  of  the 
“  cantons  ”  into  which  the  Knights  were  divided  ;  but  for  any 
practical  political  purpose  this  was  of  little  value. 

After  this  description  of  the  political  condition  of  Germany 
at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  of  the  breakdown 
of  the  central  institutions,  of  the  want  of  union,  of  the  utter 
absence  of  any  national  feeling,  it  will  hardly  be  necessary  to 
dwell  at  any  great  length  on  the  social  or  the  economic 
condition  of  the  country.  During  the  seventeenth  century, 
Germany  had  been  the  theatre  of  more  than  one  terrible  and 
devastating  conflict :  for  thirty  years  she  had  been  the  battle¬ 
ground  of  a  war  originally  caused  by  bitter  religious  anta¬ 
gonisms  and  continued  to  satisfy  the  greed  and  ambition  of 
foreign  powers,  a  war  waged  mainly  by  mercenaries,  soldiers 
of  fortune  whose  main  object  was  plunder  and  who  were 
restrained  neither  by  discipline  nor  by  national  sympathies 
from  inflicting  every  variety  of  outrage  and  suffering  on  the 
wretched  inhabitants  of  the  countries  they  traversed.  In  the 
seventeenth  century  wars  were  not  waged  with  kid  gloves  and 
neither  commanders  nor  commanded  were  influenced  for  a 
moment  by  humanitarian  scruples.  And  after  thirty  years 
of  this  there  had  come  but  a  brief  respite  before  the  aggres¬ 
sions  of  Louis  XIV  had  involved  Germany  in  a  new  series  of 
conflicts,  which  extended  over  forty-two  years  of  which  two- 
thirds  were  years  of  war.  The  double  devastation  of  the 
unfortunate  Palatinate  and  Marlborough’s  harrying  of  Bavaria 
were  not  calculated  to  heal  the  wounds  left  by  the  soldiers  of 
Bernhard  of  Saxe-Weimar,  of  Tilly,  of  Pappenheim  and  of 
Conde.  What  wonder  that  Germany,  which  before  the  out¬ 
break  of  the  Wars  of  Religion  had  been  a  rich  and  prosperous 
land,  richer  and  more  flourishing  probably  than  any  of  its 
neighbours,  had  received  injuries  in  these  wars  from  which  it 
is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  it  has  taken  her  over  two 
centuries  to  recover.  From  the  Baltic  to  the  Lake  of 
Constance,  from  the  Moselle  to  the  Oder  and  the  Moldau, 
the  country  had  been  fought  over,  plundered,  ravaged  and  laid 
waste  :  in  some  places  the  population  had  fallen  in  1 649  to  a 
tenth  of  what  it  had  been  in  1631,  and  there  is  probably  no 
great  exaggeration  in  the  estimate  which  puts  at  a  half  the  pro¬ 
portion  of  the  population  which  perished  in  the  savage  and 

1  They  stood  quite  outside  the  ordinary  division  into  Circles. 


62  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


devastating  Thirty  Years’  War.1  Since  the  Peace  of  West¬ 
phalia  no  doubt  some  progress  had  been  made,  but  the  wars 
of  the  second  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  if  less  brutal 
and  destructive  than  their  predecessors,  had  retarded  the 
recovery  of  Germany  and  greatly  hampered  the  efforts  of  those 
of  her  rulers  who  had  sought  to  encourage  the  revival  of 
population  and  prosperity.  In  1715  the  country  was  in  a 
much  better  condition  than  in  1648,  but  the  recovery  was  a 
slow  and  chequered  process. 

The  effect  of  all  this  on  agriculture,  on  manufactures,  on 
trade  and  commerce,  can  easily  be  understood.  The  Thirty 
Years’  War  had  brought  them  all  to  a  stand-still ;  and  though, 
directly  peace  was  concluded  and  order  of  a  kind  restored, 
agriculture  had  soon  recovered  some  degree  of  its  old  pros¬ 
perity,  thanks  to  the  magnificent  natural  qualities  of  the  soil, 
the  revival  of  trade  and  industry  was  a  far  slower  process  and 
the  end  of  the  century  found  Germany  very  backward.  The 
skilled  labourers  had  for  the  most  part  perished  in  the  wars,  or 
had  betaken  themselves  to  the  far  more  lucrative  and  attrac¬ 
tive  callings  of  the  soldier  and  the  bandit.  Mines  and 
quarries  had  become  unworkable  through  disuse.  Means  of 
communication  had  fallen  into  disrepair :  bridges  had  been 
destroyed  and  not  replaced.  Moreover,  the  war  had  so 
disturbed  the  country  that  the  little  capital  which  was  avail¬ 
able  for  employment  was  but  cautiously  ventured.  More 
settled  political  conditions  must  prevail  before  industry  could 
revive,  certainly  before  men  could  again  take  up  the  more 
difficult  arts  and  crafts  with  any  prospect  of  remunerative 
employment.  And  it  had  been  when  Germany,  thus  stricken 
by  the  Thirty  Years’  War,  was  just  beginning  to  recover  that 
there  had  come  the  great  development  of  French  industries 
and  commerce  under  the  fostering  hand  of  Colbert.  The 
scientific  tariff  which  he  erected  against  the  Dutch  did  not 
spare  Germany.  England,  too,  was  competing  successfully 
with  the  Dutch  for  their  carrying-trade  and  for  a  share  in  the 
commerce  of  the  Baltic,  so  that  in  face  of  the  strenuous  rivalry 
of  these  great  commercial  powers  there  was  little  chance  of  a 
successful  revival  of  the  once  mighty  Hanseatic  League. 
Moreover,  the  political  subdivision  of  the  country  was  a  great 
barrier  to  its  economic  development.  Different  codes  of  law 

1  Cf.  Z.S>  i.  pp.  41-45. 


THE  GERMAN  STATES  IN  1715 


63 


in  different  states,  heavy  taxation  everywhere,  internal  tolls 
and  taxes  on  commerce,  a  new  customs-frontier  every  few 
miles,  inefficient  police  arrangements,  governmental  and  court 
establishments  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  needs  of  the  petty 
states,  these  were  some  of  the  many  obstacles  which  the 
political  complexity  of  Germany  strewed  in  the  path  of 
industrial  or  economic  progress. 

Moreover,  bad  as  were  the  political  and  economic  con¬ 
ditions  of  the  country,  the  state  of  moral  and  intellectual  life 
was  even  worse.  The  horrors  of  the  Thirty  Years’  War  had 
produced  a  widespread  demoralisation.  Religious  passions  and 
animosities  were  temporarily  exhausted  but,  as  the  next  sixty 
years  were  too  often  to  show,  by  no  means  extinct.  Intoler¬ 
ance  and  persecution  seemed  the  only  means  by  which  piety 
was  displayed  by  the  few  rulers  whom  religious  motives 
influenced  in  the  least.  Education  had  been  thrown  back 
centuries,  schools  were  closed,  the  Universities  flooded  by  the 
return  of  ex-students  who  had  turned  soldiers  and  now  came 
back  to  an  academical  life  for  which  their  recent  experiences 
had  rendered  them  unfitted.  The  importation  of  the  habits 
of  the  camp  into  the  Universities  was  hardly  calculated  to 
make  for  intellectual  progress,  and  the  stagnation  of  German 
literature  and  thought  during  the  greater  part  of  the  next 
century  may  be  attributed  in  no  small  degree  to  the  effects  of 
the  Thirty  Years’  War.  Here  and  there  some  petty  ruler, 
aping  the  Grand  Monarque ,  might  pose  as  a  patron  of  the  arts 
and  letters,  but  usually  it  was  in  Paris  or  on  French  poets  and 
painters  that  the  taxes  were  spent  which  their  lords  and 
masters  wrung  from  the  miserable  peasants  of  Germany. 
Yet  even  in  this  dead  period  a  few  great  names  are  to  be 
found,  though  not  even  Leibnitz  can  redeem  the  seventeenth 
century  from  the  reproach  which  attaches  to  it  in  the 
intellectual  history  of  Germany.  The  eighteenth  century 
therefore  opened  with  but  faint  hopes. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  END  OF  THE  NORTHERN  WAR 


OT  even  when  the  conclusion  of  the  Peace  of  Baden 


1  N  (Sept.  1714)  finally  closed  the  war  which  had  arisen 
over  the  Spanish  Succession  was  the  whole  of  Germany  at 
peace.  The  other  great  contest  which  had  begun  with  the 
anti-Swedish  coalition  formed  by  Russia,  Denmark  and 
Saxony  -  Poland  in  1699  had  still  several  years  to  run. 
Charles  xil,  who  had  at  one  time  threatened  to  inter¬ 
fere  with  decisive  effect  in  the  Western  struggle,  was  no 
longer  dominant  in  North-Eastern  Europe.  Within  two  years 
of  the  day  when  he  set  out  Eastward  from  Alt  Ranstadt  his 
crushing  defeat  at  Pultowa  (June  26th,  1709)  had  sent  him, 
a  fugitive  without  an  army,  to  seek  the  protection  of  the  Turks, 
and  marked  the  beginning  of  the  end  for  Sweden’s  supremacy 
over  the  Baltic.  The  enemies  Charles  seemed  to  have  crushed 
promptly  had  raised  their  heads  again.  Frederick  Augustus 
of  Saxony  had  denounced  the  Treaty  of  Alt  Ranstadt  directly 
he  heard  the  news,  and  hastened  to  renew  his  alliance  with 
Russia  (Oct.  1709).  Stanislaus  Leczinski’s  tenure  of  the 
Polish  throne  had  come  to  an  abrupt  conclusion,  and  the  re¬ 
establishment  of  the  Saxon  dynasty  at  Warsaw  had  been 
effected  without  difficulty.  Denmark,  too,  had  repudiated  the 
Treaty  of  Travendahl,  unhindered  by  England  and  Holland, 
who  were  too  well  occupied  elsewhere  to  be  able  to  spare  force 
to  compel  the  Danes  to  respect  their  guarantee.  Thus  from 
all  quarters  the  territories  of  the  absent  Swedish  monarch  had 
been  attacked  ;  the  provinces  East  of  the  Baltic  were  assailed 
by  overpowering  forces  of  Russians  backed  up  by  the  new 
fleet  which  Peter  was  creating ;  the  Danes  invaded  Scania,  and 
Sweden’s  one  remaining  field  force,  Krassau’s,  had  to  retire 
from  Poland  into  Pomerania. 

However,  just  as  in  the  days  of  Charles’  success  the 
Western  Powers  had  sought  to  prevent  him  from  interfering 


1 710-2]  THE  END  OF  THE  NORTHERN  WAR 


65 


West  of  the  Elbe,  so  after  Pultowa  it  had  been  their  object 
to  make  certain  that  his  overthrow  should  not  lead  to  the 
infringement  of  the  neutrality  of  the  Empire.  Accordingly  in 
March  1710  the  Emperor  and  the  Maritime  Powers  had 
signed  a  compact  by  which  they  agreed  to  guarantee  the 
neutrality  of  Sweden’s  German  possessions  if  Krassau  would 
agree  not  to  use  them  as  a  base  for  attacking  Jutland  or 
Poland.  Welcomed  by  the  Swedish  Senate  though  repudiated 
by  Charles,  this  “  Neutrality  Compact  of  the  Hague  ”  had  on 
the  whole  been  observed,  for  Russia,  intending  to  direct  her 
attacks  on  Finland  and  the  Baltic  provinces,  was  not  disposed 
to  contest  it ;  and  though  Frederick  I  of  Prussia  would  have  been 
glad  to  seize  this  chance  of  adding  Pomerania  to  his  dominions, 
he  could  not  afford  to  offend  his  Dutch  and  English  pay¬ 
masters.  However,  in  August  17  11,  soon  after  the  Peace  of 
July  17 1 1  had  extricated  Peter  from  his  critical  position  on 
the  Pruth,  a  force  of  24,000  Russians,  Poles  and  Saxons 
crossed  Prussian  territory  on  their  way  to  Stralsund  and 
Wismar,  which  they  proceeded  to  besiege.  Prussia’s  verbal 
protests  met  with  little  attention,  and  as  she  had  no  idea  of 
embarking  in  the  war  on  behalf  of  Sweden,  she  refrained  from 
enforcing  her  words  by  blows. 

Thus  the  Baltic  war  had  spread  to  Germany ;  and  though 
Stralsund  and  Stettin  successfully  resisted  their  besiegers,  a 
Danish  force  invaded  Bremen  and  forced  that  province  to 
swear  allegiance  to  the  King  of  Denmark  (July  to  Sept.  1712), 
though  George  Louis  of  Hanover  anticipated  them  in  getting 
possession  of  Verden  also  by  occupying  it  on  the  plea  of 
sanitary  precautions  against  the  plague.  For  a  time,  indeed, 
matters  went  in  favour  of  Sweden  ;  for  Steenbock,  landing  in 
Riigen  with  10,000  men  (Sept.),  raised  the  siege  of  Stralsund 
and  then,  taking  the  offensive  against  the  Danes,  won  a 
brilliant  victory  over  them  at  Gadebusch  (Dec.)  and  drove 
them  headlong  into  Holstein  before  their  Russo-Saxon  allies 
could  come  to  their  help.1  But  his  success  was  only  temporary  ; 
pursuing  his  enemies  into  Holstein,  he  found  himself  surrounded 
by  vastly  superior  numbers,  driven  under  the  guns  of  the 
neutral  fortress  of  Tonningen  and  forced  to  capitulate  (May 

1  The  invaders  of  Scania  had  been  defeated  by  Steenbock  at  Helsingborg 
(Feb.  1710)  and  had  evacuated  the  province,  thus  enabling  Steenbock  to  cross 
to  Germany. 


66  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1713 


20th,  1713).  Just  before  that,  however,  two  important  events 
had  occurred.  In  February,  Frederick  I  of  Prussia  had  died,  in 
April  the  Peace  of  Utrecht  had  been  signed. 

Neither  the  situation  of  his  own  kingdom  nor  that  of 
Baltic  affairs  in  general  tempted  Frederick  William,  the  new 
“  King  in  Prussia,”  to  plunge  at  once  into  the  Northern  war. 
Anxious  as  he  was  to  acquire  the  coveted  Western  Pomerania, 
it  was  difficult  to  see  by  what  path  the  desired  goal  might 
be  best  reached.  Prussia  required  a  period  of  rest,  time  in 
which  to  restore  order  to  the  entangled  finances,  to  prepare 
for  an  intervention  which  might  easily  prove  disastrous  if 
undertaken  prematurely.  Moreover,  the  relations  of  the 
Baltic  Powers  were  in  so  complicated  a  condition  that  it  was 
by  no  means  clear  what  line  of  policy  was  best  suited  to  the 
requirements  of  Prussia  ;  for  little  as  the  Hohenzollern  liked  the 
presence  of  Sweden  at  the  mouth  of  the  Oder,  even  Swedes 
were  to  be  preferred  to  Russians  or  to  Saxons. 

The  first  opportunity  of  influencing  the  course  of  affairs 
which  came  to  Frederick  William  was  by  means  of  a  treaty 
with  the  Regent  of  Holstein-Gottorp.  Christian  Augustus  of 
Holstein-Eutin,  Administrator  of  the  sequestrated  see  of 
Ltibeck  and  guardian  of  the  youthful  Duke  Charles  Frederick, 
the  heir  presumptive  of  his  childless  uncle  Charles  XII  of 
Sweden,  was  a  person  of  no  small  importance ;  and  in  his 
minister,  Gortz,  he  had  at  his  side  an  active,  restless  in¬ 
triguer  who  hoped  to  suck  no  small  advantage  out  of  the 
position  in  which  he  found  himself.  Accordingly  in  June 
1713  the  Regent  concluded  a  treaty  with  Frederick  William 
by  which  Prussian  and  Holstein  troops  were  to  occupy 
Stettin,  Wismar  and  the  other  Swedish  possessions  in  order 
to  secure  their  neutrality  until  the  conclusion  of  peace,  when 
they  were  to  be  restored  to  Sweden.  Moreover,  Prussia 
was  to  use  her  influence  with  Denmark  to  induce  the  Danes 
to  evacuate  Holstein-Gottorp  and  to  agree  to  the  succession 
of  Charles  Frederick  to  the  Swedish  throne.  When  he 
became  King  of  Sweden,  Charles  Frederick  was  to  hand  over 
to  Prussia  Stettin  and  the  Southern  part  of  Swedish  Pomerania. 
Thus  Prussia  hoped  to  obtain  a  hold  on  Swedish  Pomerania 
which  might  prove  exceedingly  useful ;  but  the  whole  scheme 
broke  down  because  General  von  Meyerfeldt,  the  Governor  of 
Stettin,  declined  to  accept  it  without  the  assent  of  Charles  xn. 


1713-4]  THE  END  OF  THE  NORTHERN  WAR 


67 


Unable  to  obtain  Stettin  by  negotiation  with  Sweden,  Prussia 
had  to  fall  back  on  an  agreement  with  Russia,  whose  troops 
proceeded  to  renew  the  siege  of  the  town.  For  some  months 
it  held  out,  but  in  September  1713  the  garrison  had  to 
capitulate,  receiving  a  free  passage  to  Sweden,  while  the  town 
was  handed  over  to  the  Prussians  by  the  Russian  general 
Mentschikov,  with  whom  Frederick  William  concluded  the 
Convention  of  Schwedt  (Oct.  6th,  1 7  1  3).  This  arranged  for  the 
occupation  of  Pomerania  by  the  Prussians,  who  were  to  keep 
it  neutral  and  prevent  the  Swedes  using  it  as  a  base  from 
which  to  attack  the  Allies.  This  convention  marked  the 
point  at  which  Prussia  found  herself  forced  to  cultivate  better 
relations  with  Russia,  of  whom  she  had  hitherto  been  extremely 
jealous  and  suspicious :  it  was  mainly  due  to  the  conclusion  of 
the  Peace  of  Utrecht,  which  set  the  Maritime  Powers  free  to 
interfere  in  the  Baltic,  in  which  case  it  was  to  be  feared  they 
might  seek  to  bring  about  peace  on  the  basis  of  uti  possidetis 
before  Prussia  had  had  time  to  make  any  acquisitions.  The 
next  step  in  the  Russo-Prussian  alliance  was  a  fresh  conven¬ 
tion,  concluded  in  June  1714,  by  which  Russia  pledged  herself 
to  see  Prussia  secured  in  possession  of  Stettin  and  Pomerania 
to  the  Peene  river,  with  the  islands  of  Wollen  and  Usedom, 
Prussia  undertaking  a  similar  obligation  towards  Russia  with 
regard  to  Carelia,  Esthonia  and  Ingermannland. 

But  before  this  new  alliance  could  lead  to  any  definite 
result  the  situation  was  completely  altered  by  the  sudden 
reappearance  of  Charles  XII,  who  arrived  at  Stralsund  in 
November  1714  after  an  adventurous  and  circuitous  journey 
from  Turkey,  while  a  few  months  earlier  the  death  of  Queen 
Anne  had  placed  the  British  crown  on  the  head  of  George 
Louis  of  Hanover  and  the  British  fleet  at  the  disposal  of 
the  “  Electoral  ”  aims  of  the  new  King.  Hitherto  England 
had  been  absolutely  neutral  in  the  Baltic  struggle,  though 
her  commercial  interests  in  those  quarters  caused  her  to 
watch  events  there  with  great  care.  There  had  been  a 
good  deal  of  friction  between  England  and  Sweden  over 
the  capture  by  Swedish  privateers  of  English  merchantmen 
trading  with  Russia,  and  thereby  infringing  the  “  paper  ” 
blockade  of  the  Russian  coast  which  Sweden  had  declared.1 
England  was  therefore  not  merely  serving  an  “  Electoral  ” 

1  Cf.  England  and  Hanover  (A.  W.  Ward),  p.  89. 


68  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1715 


policy  when  in  1715  she  despatched  a  strong  fleet  to  the 
Baltic.  Indeed,  but  for  the  domestic  complications  of  Anne’s 
last  few  months,  it  is  probable  that  ships  would  have  been 
sent  before  the  accession  of  George. 

The  object  upon  which  George  I  was  most  keenly  set 
was  the  acquisition  of  Bremen  and  Verden,  districts  which 
would  add  enormously  to  the  strength  of  his  Hanoverian 
possessions.  Jealousy  of  Russia  and  Prussia,  however,  made 
him  disinclined  to  take  part  with  them  against  Sweden,  and 
he  tried  hard  to  persuade  Charles  to  cede  the  coveted 
territory  to  him  as  the  reward  for  Anglo- Hanoverian  assist¬ 
ance  against  the  Czar  and  the  King  of  Prussia.  But  Charles 
with  equal  obstinacy  and  blindness  refused  this  offer,  which 
though  certainly  not  dictated  by  generosity  or  by  a  wish 
to  help  Sweden,  did  hold  out  to  him  better  prospects  than 
he  could  hope  to  secure  if  he  rejected  it.  This  refusal  drove 
George  I  into  joining  the  Russo-Prussian  alliance,  to  which 
Denmark  also  acceded.  In  June  1715  the  forces  of  the 
Coalition  began  the  attack  on  Sweden’s  last  transmarine  posses¬ 
sions  ;  the  Hanoverians  and  Danes  laid  siege  to  Wismar,  a 
mixed  army  of  Danes,  Russians  and  Saxons  accompanied  by  a 
Danish  squadron  undertook  the  reduction  of  Stralsund,  free¬ 
dom  from  interruption  by  sea  being  secured  by  the  presence 
of  Norris  and  the  English  fleet,  which  could  be  relied  upon  to 
exercise  a  restraining  influence  over  the  Swedish  naval  forces. 

The  undertaking  was  no  mere  military  promenade.  The 
Swedes  resisted  stoutly,  and  not  till  they  had  been  driven 
from  the  island  of  Usedom  (July  31st)  could  the  siege-train 
be  brought  up  along  the  coast  from  Stettin.  On  August  22nd 
they  were  driven  from  their  lines  at  Peenemtinde,  on 
September  25th  the  Danish  ships  forced  the  passage  into 
the  Rligen  Sound.  Even  then  Stralsund  held  out,  and  it 
was  found  necessary  to  obtain  complete  possession  of  Riigen, 
a  task  successfully  accomplished  by  Leopold  of  Anhalt- 
Dessau  on  November  15th  and  16th.  At  last  it  became 
obvious  even  to  Charles  that  further  resistance  was  hopeless, 
and  on  December  21st  he  made  his  escape  by  sea;  three 
days  later  Stralsund  capitulated  and  received  a  Danish 
garrison.  In  April  1716  the  fall  of  Wismar  deprived 
Sweden  of  her  last  foothold  in  Germany. 

Had  the  Allies  been  in  anything  approaching  to  union, 


1 7 1 6-8]  THE  END  OF  THE  NORTHERN  WAR 


69 


the  end  of  the  war  could  not  have  been  long  delayed,  but 
their  quarrels  and  cross  -  purposes  gave  Charles  time  to 
protract  his  resistance  for  some  years  yet.  Into  the 
kaleidoscopic  negotiations,  schemes  and  intrigues  of  1716— 
1718  it  would  be  hopeless  to  enter :  Gortz,  Alberoni,  the 
Scottish  Jacobites,  all  conceivable  alliances  and  arrangements 
fill  the  time.  One  or  two  things,  however,  are  clear.  Among 
the  most  important  factors  in  the  situation  was  the  hostility 
of  Hanover  and  Russia,  which  might  even  have  brought 
about  an  alliance  between  Russia  and  Sweden  when  the  death 
of  the  Swedish  King,  when  attacking  the  Norwegian  fortress 
of  Frederickshald  (Nov.  1718),  ended  his  adventurous  career 
and  made  the  restoration  of  peace  possible.  Charles  xil, 
despite  all  his  triumphs  in  the  field,  had  done  more  harm 
to  his  own  country  than  to  his  enemies. 

This  hostility  between  George  I  and  Peter  became  acute 
over  the  affairs  of  Mecklenburg  and  Schleswig  -  Holstein. 
When  George  made  the  arrangement  with  Denmark  by 
which  he  received  Bremen  (1715),  he  had  assented  to  the 
annexation  by  Denmark  of  Schleswig,  against  which  the  Duke 
of  Holstein-Gottorp  protested,  being  supported  in  this  by 
Peter,  who  now  championed  the  cause  of  Duke  Charles  Fred¬ 
erick  and  gave  him  his  daughter  Anne  in  marriage  in  1716. 
Secondly,  the  Russian  corps  which  had  passed  through 
Mecklenburg  in  the  spring  of  1716  on  its  way  to  Zealand 
to  take  part  in  a  proposed  descent  on  Southern  Sweden, 
had  had  some  share  in  the  capture  of  Wismar,  and  Peter 
had  therefore  laid  claim  to  the  port.  Much  to  his  irritation 
his  allies  refused,  not  wishing  to  see  him  established  so  near 
the  Elbe.  Now  as  his  troops  returned  from  Zealand  in  the 
autumn  of  1716,  the  descent  having  been  abandoned,  they 
halted  in  Mecklenburg  and  took  up  their  winter-quarters 
there.  In  this  way  Peter  was  able  to  interfere  in  the 
constitutional  quarrel  then  raging  in  Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 
where  the  Estates  were  resisting  the  efforts  of  their  Duke, 
Charles  Leopold,  to  alter  the  administrative  system  in  the 
direction  of  absolutism.  The  Duke  seized  the  chance  of 
securing  Russian  aid,  married  Catherine,  daughter  of  Peter’s 
brother  Ivan,  and  confiscated  the  lands  of  the  nobles  who 
had  appealed  to  the  Emperor.  It  was  about  this  time  that 
Peter  was  making  overtures  to  France  for  an  alliance  in 


70  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1719 


which  Russia  would  have  replaced  Sweden  as  the  Northern 
ally  of  the  Bourbons.1  England  and  France,  however,  were 
on  the  verge  of  concluding  the  alliance  by  which  Stanhope 
and  Dubois  sought  to  maintain  the  situation  established  at 
Utrecht,2  and  Russia  could  obtain  no  more  from  France 
than  a  simple  treaty  of  amity.  Another  result  of  the  Anglo- 
French  treaty  was  that  Peter  found  it  expedient  to  evacuate 
Mecklenburg,  though  some  of  his  troops  remained  there  in 
the  service  of  Charles  Leopold.3 

In  response  to  the  appeal  of  the  Mecklenburg  Estates, 
an  Imperial  rescript  committed  the  task  of  restoring  the  old 
constitution  to  Hanover  and  Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel,  who  in 
February  1719  poured  13,000  troops  into  the  Duchy,  and 
despite  a  check  at  Waldemiihlen  on  the  Sudo  (March),  occupied 
the  territory  and  carried  out  the  decree  of  the  Empire,  Charles 
Leopold  being  thus  suppressed  despite  Peter’s  patronage. 

The  death  of  Charles  XII  had  led  to  considerable  changes 
in  Sweden :  the  fall  of  Gortz  was  one  of  the  earliest,  for 
there  was  no  party  in  favour  of  the  Duke  of  Holstein-Gottorp. 
Ulrica  Eleanora  and  her  husband  Frederick  of  Hesse-Cassel 
secured  the  throne  without  much  difficulty,  though  the 
nobles  succeeded  in  recovering  much  of  the  power  of  which 
they  had  been  deprived  by  Charles  XI.  The  new  monarchs 
were  not  going  to  repeat  Charles  XIl’s  folly  in  refusing  any 
terms  which  involved  the  loss  of  territory.  They  soon  came 
to  terms  with  George  I,  and  in  November  1719  the  Peace 
of  Stockholm  recognised  him  as  possessor  of  Bremen  and 
Verden  in  return  for  a  sum  of  1,000,000  Reichsthalers. 
George  now  exerted  himself  to  secure  good  terms  for  Sweden 
from  her  other  foes.  By  Carteret’s  mediation,  Sweden  recovered 
Stralsund,  Riigen  and  Wismar  from  Denmark  (July  1720), 
while  Frederick  William,  though  loath  to  make  a  peace  in 
which  Russia  was  not  included,  had  already  agreed  to  pay 
Sweden  an  indemnity  of  2,000,000  dollars,  but  retained  his 
conquests  up  to  the  Peene  (Feb.  1720).  With  regard  to 
Poland,  Sweden  had  only  to  abandon  her  unfortunate  protegd 
Leczinski,  for  whom  she  could  do  nothing. 

George  1  had  thus  so  far  attained  his  ends  that  he  had 

1  Cf.  Martin,  xiv.  pp.  8 1  ff. 

-  Anglo-French  alliance  signed  November  28th,  1716. 

3  Cf.  England  and  Hanover ,  p.  96. 


1 720-1]  THE  END  OF  THE  NORTHERN  WAR 


7 1 


isolated  Russia — the  only  Power  still  hostile  to  Sweden — 
and  England  seemed  on  the  high  road  to  a  war  against 
Russia  on  behalf  of  Sweden  when  the  collapse  of  the  South 
Sea  Company  and  the  financial  crisis  which  followed  involved 
the  fall  of  the  Stanhope-Sunderland  section  of  the  Whig 
party.  With  the  accession  of  Walpole  and  his  followers  to 
ofifice  a  new  policy  was  introduced  into  the  councils  of 
England ;  all  idea  of  active  intervention  in  the  Baltic  was 
abandoned,  and  Sweden,  left  to  her  own  resources,  was  not 
able  to  get  very  favourable  terms  from  Russia.  The  Peace 
of  Nystadt  (Sept,  ioth,  1721)  marks  the  definite  transfer 
of  supremacy  in  the  Baltic  from  Sweden  to  Russia.  With 
the  loss  of  Carelia,  Esthonia,  Ingermannland,  Livonia  and 
the  islands  of  Dago,  Moen  and  Oesel,  Sweden’s  day  of 
greatness  came  to  an  end,  and  Russia  was  firmly  established 
as  the  dominant  power  in  the  North-East  of  Europe. 

The  twenty  years  of  war  which  this  Peace  brought  to 
an  end  afford  in  a  way  as  striking  an  illustration  of  the 
weakness  of  Germany  as  does  the  treatment  which  the 
Empire  received  at  Utrecht  and  Rastatt.  Fought  out  though 
it  was  largely  by  German  troops  and  on  German  soil,  German 
interests  played  but  little  part  in  the  struggle  and  received 
but  little  attention  in  the  Peace.  Prussia  had,  indeed,  won 
the  important  city  of  Stettin  and  had  gained  control  of  the 
mouth  of  the  Oder ;  the  German  districts  of  Bremen  and 
Verden  had  passed  from  Sweden  to  one  who  was  himself 
a  German,  even  if  he  owed  his  acquisition  in  no  small 
measure  to  non  -  German  sources  of  strength,  while  the 
definite  cession  of  Schleswig  to  Denmark  (1721)  was  not 
without  importance  for  the  future.  But  the  main  result  of 
the  war  was  that  though  the  Baltic  had  changed  masters  it 
was  still  under  non-German  control. 


[Authorities  for  this  chapter,  besides  Erdmannsdorfifer  and  Zweidineck  Sudenhorst, 
articles  in  E.H.R.  on  “The  Foreign  Policy  of  England  under  Walpole,”  1900  and 
1901  f.  ;  Ward,  England  and  Hanover ;  Nisbet  Bain,  Charles  XU.'] 


CHAPTER  IV 


PASSAROWITZ,  SICILY  AND  THE  PRAGMATIC 

SANCTION 

AUSTRIA  had  barely  got  rid  of  the  great  struggle  for  the 
Spanish  inheritance  when  she  found  herself  called  upon 
to  embark  upon  a  new  war  against  her  hereditary  foe  in  the 
South-East.  Their  success  over  the  Russians  in  1 7  i  i  had  much 
encouraged  the  Turks  in  their  desire  to  retrieve  the  losses  of 
Carlowitz,  and  they  saw  in  the  defenceless  state  of  the  Morea 
an  opportunity  for  further  gain.  Both  the  Sultan  Achmet  and 
the  new  Grand  Vizier,  Damad  Ali  Pasha,  were  ambitious  and 
aggressive,  and  they  believed  that  the  Venetian  territories  would 
prove  an  easy  prey,  and  that  the  international  situation  would 
restrain  the  Great  Powers  from  coming  to  the  help  of  the 
Republic.  They  were  both  right  and  wrong.  Right  inas¬ 
much  as  the  Venetian  hold  on  the  Morea  proved  of  the  feeblest. 
Unprepared  and  unpopular,  the  Venetian  garrisons  were  speedily 
swept  out  of  the  Peninsula,  Cerigo  followed  suit,  the  Ionian 
Islands  were  in  the  gravest  peril :  only  from  Dalmatia  were  the 
Turks  repulsed.  Wrong  because  despite  the  critical  condition 
of  affairs  in  the  North  and  despite  the  fear  of  possible  com¬ 
plications  in  Italy — for  Philip  of  Spain  had  never  acquiesced  in 
the  arrangements  of  Utrecht,  and  would  probably  seize  upon 
any  embarrassment  of  Austria  to  interfere — the  Emperor  at  the 
advice  of  Eugene  decided  to  aid  Venice.1 

The  first  necessity  was  to  send  succour  to  Corfu,  a  point  of 
great  strategic  importance,  as  its  capture  would  enable  the 
Turks  to  threaten  Southern  Italy  and  Sicily  and  would  give 
their  fleet  a  splendid  base  from  which  to  operate  in  the  Adriatic. 
Accordingly,  by  Eugene’s  advice  an  officer  of  great  experience 

1  In  April  1716  the  Austro-Venetian  treaty  of  1684  was  renewed,  Venice  promis¬ 
ing  her  aid  in  case  of  a  Spanish  attack  on  the  Italian  possessions  of  Austria. 

72 


1716 


PASSAROWITZ  AND  SICILY 


73 


and  capacity,  John  Matthias  von  Schulenburg,  was  sent  to 
take  command  at  Corfu  (Dec.  1715),  and  his  exertions  were 
largely  responsible  for  the  fact  that  when  the  Turkish  fleet 
threw  30,000  men  into  the  island  in  July  1716,  its  defences 
and  defenders  were  not  found  wanting. 

Meanwhile  Eugene,  who  was  very  anxious  that  the  work 
which  had  been  left  unfinished  at  Carlowitz  should  be  brought 
to  completion,  had  been  making  great  efforts  to  get  ready  an 
efficient  army  for  the  campaign  on  the  Danube.  As  president 
of  the  War  Council,  Eugene  was  himself  responsible  for  the 
readiness  of  the  army ;  and  though  the  chronic  emptiness 
of  the  Treasury  proved  a  serious  hindrance  to  the  mobilisa¬ 
tion,  he  was  able  in  July  to  collect  220  squadrons  and 
67  battalions,  about  80,000  men  in  all,  at  Peterwardein. 
Meanwhile  the  Grand  Vizier  had  assembled  200,000  men 
at  Belgrade  and  advanced  up  the  Danube.  Eugene  with¬ 
drew  his  men  into  the  lines  constructed  at  Peterwardein 
in  the  previous  war  by  Caprara,  and  there  gave  battle 
(Aug.  5  th).  The  fight  was  hotly  contested ;  at  one 
time  the  Austrian  right  became  disordered  owing  to  the 
difficulties  of  the  ground,  and  the  centre  was  also  checked,  but 
a  dashing  charge  by  Eugene  and  the  heavy  cavalry  on  the 
left  restored  the  fortunes  of  the  day  and  allowed  the  hard- 
pressed  infantry  to  rally  and  recover  their  ground.  Finally, 
after  a  most  even  struggle  the  Turks  were  overthrown  with 
very  heavy  loss,  the  Grand  Vizier  being  among  the  killed. 

Eugene  followed  up  his  victory  by  laying  siege  to 
Temeswar,  a  strong  and  well-built  fortress,  which  was  so 
resolutely  defended  that  there  was  time  for  a  relieving 
army  to  be  gathered  together,  though  only  to  be  beaten  off  on 
September  23rd.  This  sealed  the  fate  of  the  town,  which 
surrendered  on  October  13th  after  a  bombardment,  passing 
under  Hapsburg  rule  after  having  been  for  a  hundred  and  sixty- 
four  years  a  Turkish  possession.  With  it  a  large  part  of  the 
Banat  came  into  Austrian  hands,  including  Pancsova  and 
Mehadia.  Another  effect  of  the  victory  was  that  the  besiegers 
of  Corfu  abandoned  the  attack  on  the  hard-pressed  fortress 
(Aug.  25  th)  on  receiving  the  news  of  the  battle,  though 
no  doubt  the  repulse  of  a  grand  assault  they  had  delivered 
two  days  before  contributed  to  induce  them  to  retire. 

With  the  Banat  theirs,  the  next  task  for  the  Austrian 


74  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1717 


forces  was  to  recover  Belgrade,  which  they  had  lost  in 
1690  after  a  brief  tenure.  Early  in  June  1717  all  was 
ready  for  an  advance.  On  the  14th,  two  corps  from  Peter- 
wardein  and  from  the  Banat,  including  contingents  from 
Bavaria  and  Hesse-Darmstadt,  united  at  Pancsova.  Next 
day  the  vanguard  crossed  the  Danube  by  boats  and  constructed 
bridges  by  which  the  main  body  crossed  on  the  19th 
Belgrade  was  at  once  invested,  but  bad  weather  delayed  the 
siege  operations,  and  it  was  not  till  July  22nd  that  the 
bombardment  could  be  begun.  On  that  day  the  new  Grand 
Vizier,  Chalil  Pasha,  had  reached  Semendria  at  the  head 
of  a  relieving  army  with  which  he  proceeded  to  make  a 
raid  into  the  Banat,  and  then,  seeing  that  this  would  not 
cause  Eugene  to  relax  his  grip  on  the  beleaguered  city, 
moved  thither  himself  and  took  up  a  strong  position  with 
his  right  on  the  Danube.  Eugene,  thus  hemmed  in,  was 
forced  to  hurl  his  troops  directly  against  the  Turkish  camp, 
strongly  posted  though  it  was  (Aug.  16th).  His  scheme 
for  the  attack 1  contemplated  that  his  left  should  begin 
the  battle,  but  a  heavy  mist  upset  the  plan.  Some  of 
the  troops  went  altogether  astray  and  left  a  large  gap 
in  the  line,  which  had  to  be  filled  by  bringing  up  part 
of  the  second  line.  However,  the  attack  proved  a  complete 
success,  the  right  outflanked  the  Turkish  position,  and  after 
two  hours  of  fighting  they  were  in  complete  flight,  and 
their  camp  in  Austrian  hands.  At  a  cost  of  1500  killed 
and  3500  wounded,  the  victors  had  inflicted  a  loss  of  20,000 
on  the  Turks  and  decided  the  fate  of  Belgrade.  Two 
days  after  the  battle  the  capitulation  was  signed,  and  on 
the  22nd  the  Turks  evacuated  the  town. 

It  might  have  been  thought  that  two  such  campaigns  would 
have  inspired  the  Emperor  with  a  determination  to  push  his 
successes  still  further.  The  Turks  had  received  two  crushing 
defeats  from  which  it  would  be  hard  to  rally.  It  seemed  that 
Austria  had  the  ball  at  her  feet,  and  that  a  vigorous  prosecu¬ 
tion  of  the  war  could  hardly  fail  to  give  her  secure  possession 
of  the  valley  of  the  Lower  Danube.  But  the  opportunity 
was  allowed  to  pass  and  did  not  return  again.  For  reasons 
quite  unconnected  with  the  situation  on  the  Danube,  the 
Emperor  was  ready  to  accept  the  proposals  for  peace 

1  Cf.  Z.S.  ii.  597. 


PASSAROWITZ  AND  SICILY 


75 


1 7 1 7] 

which  the  new  Vizier,  Ibrahim,  laid  before  Eugene.  The 
contingency  contemplated  in  the  Austro-Venetian  treaty 
had  arisen.  In  August  1717  a  Spanish  squadron  arrived 
off  Cagliari  and  landed  a  force  which  occupied  the  island 
of  Sardinia  almost  without  any  opposition. 

The  reasons  for  this  move  are  not  far  to  seek.  Philip  v 
of  Spain  had  never  abandoned  his  claim  on  the  former 
possessions  of  the  Spanish  crown  in  Italy,  just  as  Charles  vi 
had  adhered  to  his  pretensions  to  be  King  of  Spain.  More¬ 
over,  his  marriage  with  the  intriguing  and  active  Princess  of 
Parma,  Elizabeth  Farnese,  by  whom  he  was  all  but  exclusively 
influenced,  had  given  him  additional  motives  for  desiring 
to  upset  the  Utrecht  arrangements.  Elizabeth’s  great  aim 
was  to  obtain  separate  establishments  for  her  sons,  since 
Philip’s  children  by  his  first  marriage  would  naturally  succeed 
to  Spain,  and  she  hoped  to  do  this  by  preventing  the  Emperor 
from  carrying  out  his  design  of  obtaining  the  reversion  of  the 
Imperial  fiefs  of  Parma,  Piacenza,1  Tuscany2  and  Guastalla. 
With  this  attempt  the  name  of  Alberoni  will  always  be  associ¬ 
ated,  though  here  it  would  hardly  be  appropriate  to  relate  the 
measures  by  which  that  able  and  enterprising  minister  sought 
to  bring  the  undertaking  to  a  successful  conclusion.  But 
it  may  be  mentioned  that  the  refusal  of  Great  Britain  to 
accept  the  highly  advantageous  offers  of  commercial  con¬ 
cessions  which  Alberoni  made  in  hopes  of  securing  her 
support  must  in  part  be  attributed  to  the  German  policy 
of  George  I  as  Elector  of  Hanover.  It  was  not  only  his 
general  policy  of  loyalty  to  the  Empire,  but  the  particular 
desire  to  get  the  Imperial  sanction  for  his  acquisition  of 
Bremen  and  Verden,  which  bound  George  to  the  Austrian 
alliance.  At  the  same  time  it  would  be  inaccurate  to  regard 
these  as  the  only  causes  of  the  rejection  of  Alberoni’s  offers. 
As  long  as  Gibraltar  and  Minorca  remained  in  British  hands 
an  alliance  between  England  and  Spain  was  not  very  probable. 
Moreover,  in  May  1 7 1 6  the  breach  which  the  events  of 
1712- 1 71 3  had  caused  between  Austria  and  England  had 
been  smoothed  over  by  the  Treaty  of  Westminster,  by  which 
the  Whigs  sought  to  revive  the  old  alliance  which  Bolingbroke 
had  abandoned. 

1  In  the  hands  of  Alessandro  Farnese,  last  Duke  of  Parma. 

2  Gaston  de  Medici,  the  Duke,  was  childless. 


76  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1717-8 

This  Anglo- Austrian  Treaty,  however,  did  not  involve 
Austria  in  any  connection  with  the  United  Provinces,  once 
again  joined  to  England  by  the  treaty  of  January  1716, 
nor  did  the  Anglo-French  alliance,  concluded  in  November 
1716,  at  first  include  Austria.  However,  when  Spain, 
provoked  by  the  arrest  (May  1 7 1 7)  of  the  Spanish  Grand 
Inquisitor  on  his  way  through  Lombardy,  hastened  into 
war  with  Austria,  although  Alberoni  had  only  had  two  of 
the  five  years  he  had  asked  for  in  which  to  make  his  pre¬ 
parations,  the  Emperor  appealed  for  help  to  the  Triple 
Alliance,  and  the  negotiation  of  the  Convention  of  London 
(April  1718)  was  followed  by  the  conclusion  in  August  of 
the  Quadruple  Alliance.1  But  before  this  took  place,  the 
peace  had  been  negotiated  by  which  Austria  turned  back 
from  the  path  which  lay  open  before  her,  and  for  the  sake 
of  a  transitory  rule  over  Sicily,  sacrificed  the  best  chance 
she  was  ever  to  have  of  securing  predominance  in  South- 
Eastern  Europe  at  the  expense  of  the  Turk.  The  Peace 
of  Passarowitz  (July  21st,  1718),  which  was  brought  about 
by  the  efforts  of  England  and  Holland,  accepted  as  its  basis 
the  principle  of  uti  possidetis.  This  left  to  the  Emperor  the 
Banat,  Northern  Servia,  including,  of  course,  Belgrade,  Wall- 
achia  as  far  as  the  Aluta,  and  a  small  district  in  Bosnia,  but 
confirmed  Candia  and  the  Morea  to  the  Turks.  Venice,  how¬ 
ever,  retained  enough  places  on  the  Albanian  and  Dalmatian 
coasts 2  to  have  good  security  for  the  safety  of  the  Ionian 
Islands.  The  Peace  of  Passarowitz  is,  it  is  true,  the  high-water 
mark  of  the  tide  of  Austrian  reconquest,  and  to  that  extent 
it  may  be  reckoned  among  Austria’s  days  of  greatness,  but 
from  the  point  of  view  of  what  might  have  been  done,  it 
must  be  regretted  as  a  half  measure,  or  rather  as  a  fatal 
mistake.  That  the  Crescent  still  floats  at  Constantinople 
may  be  attributed  in  part  to  Charles  Vi’s  fatal  preference 
for  the  former  possessions  of  the  Spanish  crown  once  so  nearly 
his.  Had  Austria  pushed  on  in  1718,  when  Russia  was 
so  fully  occupied  with  the  Baltic  War  that  she  could  not 
have  interfered,  the  “  Balkan  question  ”  might  have  been 
solved  before  it  ever  arose.  And,  indeed,  it  was  hardly 

1  This  included  one  treaty  between  the  Emperor  and  England,  France  and 
Holland,  and  another  between  the  Emperor  and  Victor  Amadeus  of  Sicily. 

2  e.g.  Butrinto,  Prevesa,  Vonizza. 


1718-20] 


PASSAROWITZ  AND  SICILY 


77 


necessary  to  have  stopped  Eugene’s  victorious  progress  for 
the  defence  of  Italy.  True,  that  the  Spaniards  followed  up 
their  successful  descent  on  Sardinia  by  an  equally  successful 
descent  on  Sicily  in  1718,  that  Palermo  capitulated  almost 
at  once  (July),  and  that  the  ease  with  which  the  Spaniards 
conquered  the  island  was  good  evidence  of  the  unpopularity 
of  the  Savoyard  rule.  But  this  success  was  of  little  avail 
when  Byng,  by  destroying  the  Spanish  fleet  off  Cape  Passaro 
(Aug.  11th),  asserted  the  British  control  of  the  Mediterranean 
and  severed  the  expeditionary  forces  from  Spain.  France 
and  England  combined  were  too  much  for  the  renascent  power 
of  Spain,  and  Austria  was  able,  not  without  some  hard  fighting 
and  one  sharp  check,1  to  recover  Sicily.  Philip  found  him¬ 
self  compelled  to  give  way,  to  dismiss  Alberoni  and  to  agree 
to  the  terms  proposed  by  the  Quadruple  Alliance.  Austria 
obtained  the  coveted  Sicily  in  exchange  for  the  valueless 
Sardinia ;  Charles  VI  renounced  his  claims  on  Spain  and  the 
Indies,  Philip  V  his  on  Italy  and  the  Netherlands;  the 
succession  to  Parma  and  Tuscany  was  promised  to  the 
children  of  Elizabeth  Farnese.2 

With  the  Treaties  of  Passarowitz,  of  London,  of  Stockholm 
and  of  Nystadt,  one  seems  to  have  the  questions  which  had 
been  agitating  Europe  settled  on  a  basis  which  offered  a 
fair  prospect  of  peace.  But  this  settlement  was  not  in  any 
way  final.  It  was  only  the  prelude  to  a  series  of  conven¬ 
tions,  coalitions,  alliances,  leagues  and  treaties  which  fill  the 
next  decade.  Elizabeth  Farnese  and  Charles  VI  between 
them  were  to  trouble  the  chanceries  of  Europe,  not  once 
but  many  times  in  the  next  ten  years,  and  if  there  were 
to  be  few  wars,  that  was  not  to  be  from  want  of  “  rumours 
of  war.” 

Yet  at  this  time,  as  in  1648,  the  chief  concern  of  the 
states  of  Germany  was  with  their  internal  affairs,  and  their 
chief  need  was  peace  and  quiet,  financial  reform,  the  restora¬ 
tion  of  order,  and  reorganisation  in  general.  Charles  VI, 
however,  failed  to  realise  this,  failed  to  pay  proper  attention 
to  these  urgent  domestic  needs,  and  unable  to  forget  that 
he  had  once  been  King  of  Spain,  devoted  himself  to  futile 
efforts  to  reverse  the  arrangements  of  Utrecht,  when  the 
internal  condition  of  the  Hapsburg  dominions  and  of  the 

1  At  Francoville,  June  1719.  Treaty  of  London,  January  1720. 


78  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1720 


Empire  afforded  ample  scope  for  all  the  energies  of  the 
most  active  and  ambitious  of  statesmen. 

One  of  the  measures  most  characteristic  of  the  way  in 
which,  renunciations  or  no  renunciations,  Charles  VI  could 
not  bring  himself  to  accept  the  rule  of  Philip  V  in  Spain, 
was  the  maintenance  of  a  separate  government  for  his  Italian 
and  Belgian  possessions,  which  he  looked  upon  as  his  in 
virtue  of  his  rights  as  King  of  Spain  and,  consequently,  as 
quite  unconnected  with  the  other  dominions  over  which  he 
ruled.  Thus  he  established  a  separate  “  Spanish  Council  ” 
to  administer  their  affairs,  and  governed  them  through 
Spaniards  of  the  party  which  had  remained  faithful  to  him, 
a  circumstance  which  partly  contributed  to  the  ease  with 
which  his  South  Italian  possessions  slipped  out  of  his  grasp 
in  1733.  Moreover,  it  was  unfortunate  that  his  Spanish 
tastes  caused  him  to  pay  great  attention  to  the  views  of  these 
exiles  in  other  matters  of  state  with  which  they  were  hardly 
qualified  to  deal.  The  existence,  therefore,  of  this  dual  system 
went  far  to  increase  the  want  of  unity  which  was  the  great 
weakness  of  the  Hapsburg  dominions  and  which  in  another 
way  Charles  was  striving  hard  to  check. 

Between  the  disconnected  dominions  of  the  Hapsburgs,  which 
had  indeed  a  central  financial  authority  in  the  Hofkammer 
and  a  central  military  authority  in  the  Hofkriegsrath ,  but  were 
in  all  other  matters  quite  independent  of  each  other,  the 
dynasty  was  the  only  real  link.  Yet  the  dynasty  itself  was 
threatened  with  a  failure  of  male  heirs.  Not  only  had  Joseph 
died  without  a  son,  but  Charles  had  none  surviving,  and  there 
were  no  male  descendants  of  younger  sons  of  previous 
Emperors  to  take  up  the  burden.  The  heir  of  the  Hapsburgs 
must  be  a  female.  It  was  on  this  account  that  Leopold  I 
had  in  1703  attempted  to  regulate  the  succession  by  making 
a  formal  arrangement  {pactum  mutuce  successio?iis)  that,  in 
default  of  a  male  heir,  females  should  succeed  by  primo¬ 
geniture,  the  special  proviso  being  added  that  Joseph’s 
daughters  should  precede  those  of  Charles.1  At  that  time, 
however,  the  existence  of  two  separate  branches  of  the 
family  had  been  contemplated,  Joseph’s  at  Vienna,  that 
of  Charles  at  Madrid,  whereas  since  then  Charles  had 

1  Cf.  Z.S.  ii.  559,  etc.  ;  also  A.  Bachmann,  Die  Pragmatische  Sanction  und  die 
Erbfolgeordnung  Leopold  Ps. 


1 72i-4] 


THE  PRAGMATIC  SANCTION 


79 


succeeded  to  the  whole  Hapsburg  heritage,  and  so  might 
fairly  claim  that  the  case  was  altered  and  that  the  natural 
order  of  succession  would  place  his  own  daughters  before 
those  of  his  brother.  Accordingly  in  1713  he  issued  a  family 
law  altering  the  order  of  succession, — which,  after  all,  he  had 
as  good  a  right  to  do  as  had  Leopold  or  any  other  head 
of  the  family — and  putting  his  own  daughters  before  those 
of  Joseph.  This  done,  he  had  to  obtain  the  assent  to  this 
arrangement,  known  as  the  Pragmatic  Sanction,  of  the 
daughters  of  Joseph  and  of  the  Estates  of  his  various 
dominions,  and  also  to  induce  the  Powers  of  Europe  to 
recognise  it. 

With  the  first  two  this  was  not  hard.  He  was  able  to 
extract  an  acceptance  of  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  from  the 
Archduchess  Maria  Josepha  when  she  married  the  Electoral 
Prince  of  Saxony  in  1719;  a  similar  formal  renunciation  was 
made  by  his  other  niece,  Maria  Amelia,  on  her  marriage  to 
the  Electoral  Prince  Charles  Albert  of  Bavaria.  The  assent 
to  the  arrangement  of  the  Estates  of  Upper  and  Lower 
Austria,  Bohemia,  Carinthia,  Moravia  and  Silesia  was  secured 
in  1720;  Tyrol  followed  suit,  but  “saving  its  freedom  and 
rights”;  Croatia  agreed  in  1721,  Hungary  and  Transylvania 
in  1722,  the  Netherlands  in  1724. 

To  obtain  its  recognition  by  the  Powers  was,  however, 
another  matter,  and  was  the  guiding  principle  in  all  the  foreign 
relations  of  the  Emperor,  determining  his  actions  to  the 
exclusion  of  other  motives.  The  first  step  to  which  it  led  him 
was  a  somewhat  remarkable  change  of  front.  An  international 
congress  was  opened  at  Cambrai  in  1722  to  try  to  settle 
outstanding  difficulties,  but  its  negotiations  broke  down  over 
the  commercial  quarrels  of  the  Maritime  Powers  with  the 
Emperor  and  with  Spain.  Elizabeth  Farnese  found  that 
her  Italian  schemes  would  receive  no  support  from  England 
and  France,  the  Spanish  ministers,  who  set  the  prosperity 
of  their  country  before  the  interests  of  the  dynasty,  found 
England  unyielding  on  the  question  of  the  West  Indian  trade, 
and  the  Emperor,  annoyed  at  the  opposition  of  the  Maritime 
Powers  to  his  favourite  commercial  scheme,  the  Ostend  East 
India  Company,  drew  nearer  his  old  enemy,  Philip  of  Spain. 
Through  the  instrumentality  of  Ripperda,  a  Dutch  adventurer 
in  the  Spanish  service,  the  League  of  Vienna  was  concluded 


80  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1725 


in  May  1725.  The  keynote  of  this  surprising  arrangement 
was  the  proposal  for  a  double  marriage  between  the  two 
daughters  of  the  Emperor  and  the  two  sons  of  Elizabeth 
Farnese,  the  idea  being  that  Don  Carlos  as  the  husband  of  the 
elder  sister  should  be  elected  King  of  the  Romans,  while  Don 
Philip  and  the  Archduchess  Maria  Anna  should  receive  the 
Italian  possessions  of  the  family.  Renunciations  were 
exchanged  by  the  Emperor  and  the  King ;  and  while  Austria 
promised  her  good  offices  towards  obtaining  Minorca  and 
Gibraltar  for  Spain,  Philip  V  recognised  the  Pragmatic  Sanction 
and  promised  his  support  to  the  Ostend  Company,  which  was 
to  be  put  on  the  same  footing  in  West  Indian  waters  as  England 
and  Holland. 

This  Ostend  Company  was  the  result  of  the  adoption  by 
Prince  Eugene  and  the  Emperor  of  a  scheme,  begun  by  private 
enterprise,  to  develope  the  trade  of  the  Austrian  Netherlands 
and  to  utilise  the  natural  advantages  of  their  geographical 
position,  hitherto  restrained  and  hampered  by  the  artificial 
trammels  of  the  Peace  of  MUnster  and  the  Barrier  Treaty. 
So  much  success  had  attended  the  first  efforts  of  the  enter¬ 
prise  that  Dutch  hostility  was  greatly  excited,  and  they 
proceeded  to  seize  Belgian  vessels  and  treat  them  as  good 
prize.  Upon  this  the  Emperor  took  the  enterprise  under  his 
protection,  and  the  Ostend  Company  was  formed  in  June  1722, 
to  trade  with  the  East  and  West  Indies  and  with  Africa.  The 
Company  established  factories  at  Canton,  in  Bengal  and  on  the 
Coromandel  Coast  ;  and  its  progress  was  soon  such  as  to  excite 
the  jealousy  of  the  Maritime  Powers.  It  was  not  merely  its 
commercial  success  which  alarmed  the  eager  traders  of 
Amsterdam,  for  whose  benefit  Spain  had  been  forbidden  to 
trade  to  the  Indies  from  Belgium  in  1648.1  It  was  not  merely 
that  Ostend  promised  to  become  a  great  trading  centre,  as 
Trieste  was  doing  in  the  Adriatic ;  complete  success  would 
have  made  the  Emperor  much  less  dependent  on  the  naval 
strength  of  Maritime  Powers.  Hence  England  supported  the 
Dutch  in  their  opposition  to  the  Company ;  while  France, 
though  less  concerned  in  the  affairs  of  the  Ostend  Company 


1  The  Emperor’s  contention  was  that  the  Netherlands  had  been  thus  restricted 
by  the  Treaty  of  Mlinster,  because  in  Spanish  hands  they  had  ceased  to  be  part 
of  the  Empire  with  which  they  were  now  reunited,  so  that  the  restrictions  had 
ceased  to  apply  to  them.  Cf.  Z.S.  ii.  622. 


1726-9] 


THE  PRAGMATIC  SANCTION 


81 


and  anxious  to  avoid  a  war  with  Austria  and  Spain,  followed 
— without  enthusiasm — in  the  lead  of  England. 

The  result  was  that  while  Russia,  Bavaria,  Cologne,1 
Treves 2  and  the  new  Elector  Palatine,  Charles  Philip 
of  Neuburg,  who  had  succeeded  his  brother,  John  William, 
in  1716,  adhered  to  the  League  of  Vienna,  a  counter¬ 
coalition  was  formed  by  Townshend  in  the  shape  of  the 
League  of  Herrnhausen  (Sept.  1725),  which  included 
England,  Holland,  France  and  Prussia.3 * * 6  With  Europe 
thus  arrayed  in  two  hostile  camps,  a  great  war  seemed 
imminent.  But  except  for  Elizabeth  Farnese,  no  one  really 
desired  war :  the  unnatural  Austro-Spanish  alliance  was 
already  showing  signs  of  weakness,  since  neither  partner 
displayed  any  intention  of  carrying  out  the  pledges  they  had 
undertaken.  Ripperda’s  unpopularity  forced  the  Queen  to 
discard  him  in  favour  of  Patinol  in  May  1726.  There  was  a 
strong  party  at  Vienna,  led  by  Eugene  and  Stahremberg, 
which  was  opposed  to  the  idea  of  the  Spanish  match ;  and 
though  the  Spaniards  undertook  a  fruitless  siege  of  Gibraltar, 
while  England  blockaded  Porto  Bello  and  stopped  the  West 
Indian  trade,  the  war  did  not  spread  to  Germany  or  become 
general.  In  March  1728  the  Convention  of  the  Pardo  brought 
the  Anglo-Spanish  war  to  an  end,  and  in  the  summer  a 
Congress  was  opened  at  Soissons. 

The  upshot  of  the  Congress  of  Soissons  was  that  in 
November  1729,  Spain  came  to  terms  with  England,  France 
and  Holland.  The  uncertainty  as  to  the  succession  in  France, 
the  chief  cause  of  the  hostility  which  had,  since  1715,  prevailed 
between  Spain  and  her  natural  ally  France,  and  which  had 
driven  her  into  allying  with  her  chief  rival  in  Italy,  was 
removed  by  the  birth  of  the  Dauphin  (1729),  and  with  the 
anti-Spanish  party  gaining  the  ascendant  at  Vienna  and  the 
Austro-Spanish  marriage  proposals  obviously  abandoned,  Spain 
was  ready  enough  to  throw  over  the  Emperor  and  the  Ostend 

1  Clement  Augustus,  Archbishop-Elector  and  Bishop  of  Osnabriick,  Paderborn, 
Munster  and  Hildesheim,  a  Bavarian  Wittelsbach,  elected  in  1 723* 

2  Archbishop-Elector  Francis  Louis,  also  a  Wittelsbach,  elected  in  1716. 

3  Subsequent  additions  to  this  coalition  were  Hesse-Cassel  (March  1726), 

Denmark  (April  1727)  and  Sweden  (1727),  though  in  October  1726  Count 

Seckendorf  detached  Prussia  from  the  League  and  bound  her  to  the  Emperor  by 
the  Treaty  of  Wiisterhausen,  which  promised  Julich  and  Berg  to  Prussia,  Frederick 
William  guaranteeing  the  Pragmatic  Sanction. 

6 


82  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [i 730-1 


Company,  and  to  fulfil  the  commercial  clauses  of  the  Peace  of 
Utrecht  in  return  for  a  guarantee  of  the  Italian  Duchies  to 
Don  Carlos.  To  obtain  the  Emperor’s  assent  to  the  Treaty  of 
Seville  was  a  more  difficult  task.  Townshend  had  been 
successful  in  breaking  up  the  League  of  Vienna  without  a  war ; 
he  was  anxious  to  avoid  having  to  join  France,  Spain  and 
Holland  in  forcing  terms  upon  Charles  VI,  who  had  drawn 
closer  his  alliance  with  Russia  in  December  1728.  And  when 
ministerial  changes  in  England  resulted  in  Townshend’s  resign¬ 
ing  his  Secretaryship  of  State  (May  1730),  thereby  giving 
place  to  William  Stanhope,  Lord  Harrington,  it  was  the 
pacific  Walpole  who  was  left  at  the  head  of  the  government. 
He  was  very  anxious  to  maintain  good  relations  with  France 
and  Spain,  mainly  for  commercial  reasons,  but  he  saw  in  the 
Pragmatic  Sanction  a  way  of  escape  from  the  dilemma  in 
which  he  was  placed.  George  II  guaranteed  it  both  as 
King  of  England  and  as  Elector  of  Hanover,  and  this  induced 
the  Emperor  to  give  way  on  points  on  which  he  had  hitherto 
resisted.  By  the  Second  Treaty  of  Vienna  (March  16th,  1731) 
he  abolished  the  Ostend  Company,  promised  that  Don  Carlos 
should  succeed  to  the  Italian  Duchies,  and  agreed  to  the 
occupation  of  several  towns  in  Parma  and  Tuscany  by  Spanish 
troops.1  This  arrangement  was,  however,  only  secured  at  the 
cost  of  a  rift  within  the  lute  of  the  Anglo-French  alliance,  for 
Fleury  was  very  loath  to  guarantee  the  Pragmatic  Sanction, 
and  declined  to  follow  England’s  lead,  though  Holland  did 
do  so.  The  truth  was  that  the  exceptional  circumstances 
which  had  brought  about  the  Anglo-French  alliance  were 
ceasing  to  exist:  France  and  Spain  were  no  longer  necessary 
enemies,  Chauvelin  was  using  his  influence  against  England, 
trade  rivalries  were  forcing  themselves  to  the  front,  and  the 
question  of  Dunkirk  was  a  fruitful  source  of  disagreement. 

The  Second  Treaty  of  Vienna  marks  the  close  of  one  distinct 
period  of  alliances  and  combinations.  It  did  not  give  Europe 
the  peace  which  Walpole  desired,  but  the  quarrel  which  was  to 
bring  about  a  renewal  of  war  two  years  later  may  be  more 

1  This  took  place,  6000  Spaniards  being  escorted  to  Leghorn  by  the  English  fleet 
and  quartered  in  Parma  and  Tuscany,  much  to  the  disgust  of  Duke  Gaston  de 
Medici.  In  1732,  the  Duke  of  Parma  being  dead,  Don  Carlos  obtained  possession  of 
the  territories  of  the  Farnese,  which  the  Emperor  had  actually  occupied  on  the 
Duke’s  death. 


THE  PRAGMATIC  SANCTION 


83 


1 73i] 

justly  regarded  as  the  prelude  to  the  War  of  the  Austrian 
Succession  than  as  part  and  parcel  of  the  efforts  to  upset  the 
Peace  of  Utrecht  The  so-called  War  of  the  Polish  Succession 
began,  it  is  true,  in  that  international  storm-centre,  but  it  owes 
its  importance  to  having  been  the  first  attack  of  the  Bourbon 
Powers,  reunited  by  the  first  of  the  Family  Compacts,  upon  the 
Hapsburg  dominions. 

It  must  certainly  be  admitted  that  in  all  these  negotiations 
and  coalitions,  one  has  heard  little  of  German  powers  and 
nothing  of  Germany.  Charles  was  to  some  extent  acting  as 
head  of  the  Empire  in  his  attempts  to  give  the  trade  of 
Germany  an  outlet  to  the  ocean  through  his  own  dominions, 
but  the  real  importance  to  Germany  of  all  these  diplomatic 
variations  lies  in  the  underlying  attempt  to  get  the  Pragmatic 
Sanction  recognised  by  the  Powers.  And  in  this  Charles  had 
been  fairly  successful.  Spain  had  been  the  first  to  give  her 
guarantee  (in  May  1725),  Russia  came  next  (August  1726), 
then  (September  1st)  the  four  Wittelsbach  Electors,  Bavaria, 
Cologne,  the  Palatinate  and  Treves,  followed  in  October  by 
Prussia  at  the  Treaty  of  Wiisterhausen.  The  Elector  of 
Mayence,  the  Duke  of  Brunswick,  and  various  other  minor 
Princes  were  also  secured ;  and  though  Charles  Albert  of 
Bavaria,  who  had  succeeded  Maximilian  Emmanuel  in  February 
1726,  withdrew  his  recognition  on  the  ground  that  the  terms 
of  the  treaty  of  1726  had  never  been  fulfilled,  and  assisted  by 
Saxony  and  the  Palatinate  obstructed  the  Emperor's  efforts  to 
obtain  the  assent  of  the  Diet,  this  was  secured  in  1732,  just 
after  the  concessions  to  Don  Carlos  and  the  abandonment  of 
the  Ostend  Company  had  won  the  recognition  of  the  Pragmatic 
Sanction  by  England,  Hanover  and  the  United  Provinces. 
Still,  as  the  event  was  to  prove,  these  guarantees  were  little 
more  than  paper,  and  it  would  have  been  better  if  Charles  VI 
had  devoted  his  time  to  the  constructive  reforms  which  might 
have  given  his  dominions  the  unity  and  coherence  which  they 
so  badly  needed  and  which  would  have  been  a  far  surer 
safeguard. 


CHAPTER  V 


PRUSSIA  UNDER  FREDERICK  WILLIAM  I 

IF  the  minor  Powers  of  Germany  play  but  unimportant 
parts  in  international  affairs  in  the  years  following  on 
the  Peace  of  Utrecht,  it  must  be  admitted  that,  apart  from  the 
troubles  to  which  the  retention  of  the  “  Ryswick  clause  ”  in  the 
Peace  of  Baden  gave  rise,  their  internal  affairs  equally  fail  to 
afford  much  material  for  history.  One  is  not  accustomed  to 
attribute  to  religious  motives  a  very  important  influence  on 
international  affairs  after  1648,  but  what  had  happened  in 
that  year  was  that  the  religious  differences  had  been  slurred 
over  rather  than  settled,  and  so  the  strife  continued,  though  in  a 
somewhat  different  form.  In  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  Roman  Catholicism  had  been  stronger  and  more 
aggressive  than  Protestantism  ;  it  had  made  marked  progress 
among  the  upper  classes,  to  whom  it  offered  better  social  and 
financial  prospects  than  did  the  rival  creeds.  Poverty  and 
ambition  had  been  effective  missionaries  in  the  leading 
Protestant  families.  Two  1  of  the  children  of  the  “  Winter- 
King  ”  himself  had  been  among  the  converts.  Christian 
Louis  of  Mecklenburg-Schwerin  had  changed  his  faith  in 
order  to  get  a  divorce  which  would  let  him  marry  one 
of  the  Montmorenci  family ;  Ernest  of  Hesse- Rheinfels 
endeavoured  by  this  means  to  gain  the  Imperial  support  in  his 
disputes  with  his  cousins  at  Hesse-Cassel.  Of  the  conversion 
of  Frederick  Augustus  of  Saxony  and  of  the  change  in  the 
religion  of  the  Elector  Palatine  with  the  accession  of  the 
Neuburgs,  mention  has  already  been  made ; 2  but  it  is  important 
to  notice  that  some  authorities  go  so  far  as  to  call  these 
religious  differences  the  principal  cause  of  the  weakness  and 
disunion  of  Germany  at  this  period.3  Be  that  as  it  may, 

1  Edward,  who  married  Anne  of  Gonzaga-Nevers,  and  Louise,  a  nun,  o.s.p.  1709. 

2  Cf.  pp.  39  and  44. 

3  e.g.  de  Broglie,  Frederic  11  et  Marie  Thertse,  i.  250.  Cf.  Erdmannsdorffer, 
bk.  iii.  ch.  5. 


1713-40]  PRUSSIA  UNDER  FREDERICK  WILLIAM  I  85 


religious  dissensions  did  continue  to  give  much  trouble  and 
to  provide  the  Diet  with  the  greater  part  of  its  occupation  ; 
such  a  question,  for  instance,  as  the  objection  raised  by  the 
Protestants  to  the  reduction  in  the  “  matricular  ”  contribution 
of  Cologne  on  the  score  that  the  falling  off  in  the  trade  and 
revenue  of  that  city  was  due  to  the  oppression  of  its  Protestant 
inhabitants. 

Among  those  on  whom  the  “  Ryswick  clause  ”  bore  most 
heavily  were  the  Protestant  subjects  of  the  Elector  Palatine. 
John  William  had  been  largely  responsible  for  the  clause,  and 
he  put  it  into  force  with  unsparing  vigour.  An  era  of  persecu¬ 
tion  set  in  ;  the  churches  and  estates  of  the  Calvinists  were 
confiscated  on  the  most  flimsy  pretexts,  their  freedom  of  wor¬ 
ship  was  seriously  hindered  ;  the  Jesuits  were  greatly  encouraged, 
and,  despite  all  pledges  to  the  contrary,  were  allowed  to  obtain 
control  of  the  Faculty  of  Philosophy  in  the  University  of 
Heidelberg  with  disastrous  results  to  the  University.  By  way 
of  bringing  pressure  to  bear  on  John  William,  Frederick  I  of 
Prussia,  a  sturdy  and  consistent  Evangelical,  who  had  refused 
to  make  concessions  to  the  Catholics  even  to  gain  the  coveted 
“Crown,”1  had  threatened  to  levy  reprisals  on  his  Catholic  subjects 
in  Westphalia,  and  had  thereby  induced  the  Elector  to  with¬ 
draw  some  of  his  edicts;  but  John  William’s  successor,  Charles 
Philip  (1716— 1742),  continued  the  policy  of  persecution.  In 
1719  he  forbade  the  use  of  the  Heidelberg  Confession  of 
1563,  and  refused  to  let  the  Calvinists  share  any  longer  in  the 
use  of  the  chief  church  of  Heidelberg,  that  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 
At  this  point  Hanover,  Hesse-Cassel  and  Prussia  intervened 
and  by  making  reprisals  on  their  Catholic  subjects  forced 
Charles  Philip  to  give  way  sulkily  (Feb.  1720),  one  mani¬ 
festation  of  his  discontent  being  his  removal  of  his  official 
residence  from  Heidelberg  to  Mannheim. 

A  rather  better  known  episode  in  this  persecution  is  the 
treatment  of  the  Protestants  who  formed  a  majority  among  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Archbishopric  of  Salzburg.  Their  Pro¬ 
testantism  was  of  the  staunchest,  and  nothing  could  induce 
them  to  forsake  it.  From  1668  to  1687  they  had  suffered 
grievously  from  Archbishop  Maximilian  Gandulph  von  Kuen- 
burg,  but  since  his  time  peace  had  prevailed  until  the  election 

1  Cf.  E.  Berner,  Auf  den  Briefivechsel  Konig  Friedrichs  von  Preussen  und  seme j 
Familie. 


86  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1713- 


of  Leopold  von  Firmian  as  Archbishop  in  1727.  He  at  once 
instituted  a  vigorous  persecution  only  to  meet  with  a  stubborn  t 
resistance.  The  Archbishop  declared  his  subjects  rebels,  and 
called  in  Austrian  troops  to  “  dragonnade  ”  them  into  submis¬ 
sion  ;  and  finally,  in  October  173  1,  he  compelled  them  to  leave 
their  homes  at  the  very  shortest  notice,  not  allowing  the  statutory 
three  years’  grace  promised  at  Osnabriick.  This  proved 
Frederick  William’s  opportunity,  just  as  the  Revocation  of  the 
Edict  of  Nantes  had  been  his  grandfather’s.  East  Prussia 
had  been  depopulated  and  reduced  almost  to  the  condition 
of  a  desert  by  the  ravages  of  cattle-disease  and  the  plague, 
especially  in  1709  and  1710,  and  Frederick  William  saw  that 
the  exiles  would  prove  most  desirable  colonists.  He  therefore 
issued  an  edict  (Feb.  1732)  in  which  he  offered  a  welcome  to  the 
Salzburgers,  most  of  whom  found  their  way  to  this  haven  of 
refuge;  some  stopped  on  the  way  in  Franconia  and  Swabia, 
others  pushed  on  to  the  Netherlands,  a  few  wandered  as 
far  afield  as  North  America.  Though  attended  with  great 
difficulties,  the  settlement  in  East  Prussia  was  on  the  whole  a 
great  success,  and  Frederick  William  managed  to  extort  from 
the  Archbishop  compensation  for  the  confiscated  property  of 
the  emigrants. 

But  the  recolonising  of  East  Prussia  with  the  Salzburgers 
is  but  a  small  item  in  the  work  which  FYederick  William  I  did 
for  the  Hohenzollern  monarchy.  His  is  not  an  attractive  or  an 
edifying  personality,  but  his  place  in  the  history  of  Prussia  is 
one  of  the  greatest  importance.  If  the  Great  Elector  had  laid 
the  foundations,  it  was  not  everyone  who  could  have  built  upon 
them  with  such  sureness  and  success,  who  could  have  so  filled 
up  the  gaps  in  the  original  design  and  improved  upon  it. 
The  twin  pillars  on  which  the  success  of  Frederick  Il’s  foreign 
policy  rested,  the  highly  efficient  army  and  the  centralised 
bureaucracy  under  the  exclusive  direction  of  the  autocratic 
head  of  the  State,  were  the  work  of  Frederick  William.  In¬ 
tensely  practical,  hard-working,  unsparing  of  himself  or  others, 
harsh,  narrow-minded,  in  some  points  petty,  but  thoroughgoing 
in  every  respect,  Frederick  William  preached  the  gospel  of 
hard  work  and  efficiency,  and  did  not  fail  to  practise  what  he 
preached.  As  in  the  Great  Elector’s,  so  in  Frederick  William’s 
political  creed,  absolutism  was  the  chief  article.  He  had  a  great 
idea  of  the  kingly  office,  of  its  duties  no  less  than  of  its  rights 


1 74°]  PRUSSIA  UNDER  FREDERICK  WILLIAM  I  87 


and  privileges.  Regarding  his  position  as  held  from  God,  he 
accepted  the  fullest  responsibility  for  all  the  acts  of  the  ad¬ 
ministration,  no  detail  being  too  petty  to  escape  his  supervision, 
while  even  when  immersed  in  details  he  did  not  lose  sight  of 
the  principles  involved. 

From  the  moment  of  his  accession  it  became  obvious  that 
the  Prussian  state  was  on  the  verge  of  sweeping  changes.  The 
gorgeous  funeral  which  Frederick  William  gave  to  his  father 
may  be  regarded  as  emblematic  of  the  obsequies  of  the 
ceremonious  and  extravagant  order  which  had  prevailed  under 
the  first  King  in  Prussia.  A  complete  reform  of  the  Court 
establishment  ushered  in  the  new  system.  The  household  was 
cut  down  to  a  fifth  of  what  it  had  been,  the  salaries  of  the 
few  officials  who  escaped  being  dismissed  were  greatly  reduced, 
luxury  was  banished,  an  almost  Spartan  simplicity  and  economy 
became  the  order  of  the  day.  Similarly,  all  branches  of  the 
administration  were  subjected  to  a  relentless  purging  of  sine¬ 
cures  and  abuses.  Peculation  and  corruption  were  severely 
punished,  inefficiency  was  stamped  out,  a  new  spirit  and  a  new 
discipline  infused  into  the  public  service.  Moreover,  measures 
of  organic  reform  were  introduced  with  a  promptitude  which 
showed  that  they  had  for  the  most  part  been  devised  in 
advance. 

Thus  in  August  1713  there  appeared  an  edict  regulating 
the  affairs  of  the  royal  Domains.  The  King  took  them  com¬ 
pletely  into  his  own  control,  only  letting  them  out  on  short 
terms,  raised  the  rents  wherever  it  was  possible,  took  every 
opportunity  of  increasing  the  Domains  by  purchase,  invested 
any  surplus  in  this  way,  and  declared  the  whole  Domain  in¬ 
alienable.  The  success  of  all  these  reforms  may  best  be 
judged  from  the  fact  that  the  revenues  of  the  Domains,  which 
in  1713  amounted  to  1,800,000  thalers,  had  risen  to  3,300,000 
thalers  by  1  740,  a  sum  all  but  equal  to  the  3,600,000  thalers 
produced  by  the  General  War  Fund.  Together  with  this  went 
reforms  in  the  administration.  Flitherto  the  Domains’  revenues, 
with  those  of  the  Mint,  Post  Office  and  Customs,  had  been  under 
one  set  of  officials,  the  direct  taxes — specially  allotted  to  the 
Army — being  under  the  Military  Board.1  Frederick  William 
worked  up  this  system  further :  a  General  Directory  was  organ¬ 
ised  to  supervise  the  local  officials  responsible  for  the  Domains 

1  Erdmannsdorffer,  ii.  486  ff. 


S3  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1713- 


and  indirect  taxes,  a  Director  of  the  War  Commission 
( Generalkriegscommissariat )  was  put  over  the  “  war  taxes  ” 
(Kriegsgef alle)\  but  as  this  arrangement  seemed  to  produce  two 
Finance  Ministers,  the  Finance  Chamber  {G  enerah'echenkammer') 
was  established  in  1714  to  control  both.  However,  this  plan 
proved  productive  of  much  confusion  and  friction,  and  in 
1723  Frederick  William  carried  out  a  most  radical  change, 
abolishing  the  dual  system,  and  substituting  for  it  a  central 
administrative  body.  Of  this  new  General  Directory,  formed 
by  the  amalgamation  of  the  two  existing  branches,  and 
organised  in  five  departments  each  under  a  Minister,  the 
King  was  himself  the  head.  To  this  central  authority  the 
local  officials  were  completely  subordinated,  this  arrangement 
practically  doing  away  with  the  last  shreds  of  local  autonomy. 

Corresponding  to  these  changes  in  the  financial  admini¬ 
stration  was  the  supersession  of  the  Privy  Council,  which  had 
proved  altogether  too  large  for  efficiency,  as  the  chief  engine 
of  government.  The  King’s  personal  activity  was  largely 
responsible  for  this,  but  the  definite  allotment  of  business  to 
the  separate  Ministers  had  much  to  do  with  it.  A  leading 
feature  in  this  whole  scheme  of  reform  was  the  delocalis¬ 
ation  of  the  administration.  Vacancies  were  never  filled  by 
a  native  of  the  district  in  which  they  occurred,  for  Frederick 
William  meant  the  officials  to  be  his  servants,  looking  only  to 
him  as  their  master,  indifferent  to  any  interests  but  his,  a  hier¬ 
archy  working  automatically  as  his  delegates.  This,  of  course, 
involved  the  complete  subordination  of  the  local  and  municipal 
government  to  the  central  administration,  the  culmination  of 
victory  of  the  Prince  ( Fiirstenthum )  over  the  Estates  ( Stande - 
thum :).  The  Landtag  (Diet)  completely  lost  its  powers,  the 
nobles,  who  retained  their  great  social  privileges,  being  reconciled 
to  the  new  order  by  being  almost  identified  with  the  army,  to 
whose  interests  all  other  considerations  were  postponed.  On 
one  occasion  only  was  constitutional  opposition  offered.  This 
was  in  1717,  when  Frederick  William  introduced  a  scheme  for 
doing  away  with  tenure  by  military  service,  substituting  a  tax 
of  fifty  thalers  per  annum  on  each  knight’s  fee  ( Ritterpferd ) 
to  be  paid  to  the  war  chest.  This  aroused  the  nobles  of 
East  Prussia  and  Magdeburg,  who  objected  greatly  to  being 
put  on  the  same  footing  as  the  peasantry  and  townsfolk  ;  but 
though  the  Magdeburg  knights  went  so  far  as  to  appeal  to 


i74o]  PRUSSIA  UNDER  FREDERICK  WILLIAM  I  89 


the  Emperor,  who  listened  favourably  to  their  complaints, 
Frederick  William  really  triumphed.  He  granted  the  reduction 
of  the  tax  from  fifty  to  forty  thalers  as  a  concession  to  the 
Emperor,  but  this  was  a  cheap  price  for  the  establishment  of 
the  principle.  Equally  successful  was  his  attack  on  the 
municipal  government.  The  towns  were  under  petty 
oligarchies  which  kept  the  majority  of  the  townsfolk  out  of 
any  share  in  the  government,  so  that  the  burghers  benefited  on 
the  whole  by  being  deprived  of  the  relics  of  what  had  once 
been  autonomy.  The  management  of  their  finances  was  taken 
away  from  the  towns  and  transferred  to  the  central  government, 
which  also  obtained  control  over  justice  and  police,  and  in  this 
way  the  old  local  oligarchies  were  really  quite  broken  up, 
the  royal  tax-collector  ( Steuer-rath )  in  each  town  becoming 
the  real  head  of  the  administration.  If  this  government  by 
the  central  authorities  was  oppressive  and  heavy,  it  was  at  least 
even-handed,  economical  and  efficient. 

The  condition  of  judicial  affairs  afforded  another  field  for 
the  King’s  reforming  activities.  Almost  immediately  after  his 
accession  (June  1713),  Frederick  William  adopted  many  of  the 
reforms  which  Bartholdi,  the  Minister  of  Justice,  had  urged 
upon  Frederick  I  in  the  previous  year.  He  gave  orders  for 
the  compilation  of  a  code  of  Prussian  law,  of  which  an  instal¬ 
ment  was  published  by  von  Cocceji  in  1721,  though  it  was 
not  till  nearly  the  close  of  the  century  that  the  code  was 
completed.  Much  was  also  done  by  von  Cocceji  at  the  head 
of  the  Court  of  Appeal  in  the  way  of  clearing  off  arrears  of 
work  and  accelerating  the  speed  of  judicial  procedure  so  as  to 
keep  pace  with  new  cases. 

It  was  rather  more  difficult  to  obtain  success  when 
Frederick  William  turned  his  attention  to  the  improvement  of 
industrial  conditions,  as  the  fact  that  the  old  order  continued 
to  prevail  over  the  border  in  Saxony  and  Hanover  interfered 
considerably  with  his  legislation  as  to  the  guilds,  though  an 
edict  published  in  1732  ( Handwerksgesetzgebung )  did  subject 
them  to  State  supervision  and  alter  and  adapt  their  bye-laws 
to  new  conditions.  The  object  which  Frederick  William  had 
before  him  in  this  branch  of  legislation  was  the  development 
of  the  resources  of  the  country.  A  system  of  rigid  protection 
laid  prohibitory  duties  on  foreign  competition  and  gave  every 
encouragement  to  home  manufactures.  To  aid  the  wool- 


90  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1713- 

weavers  the  export  of  wool  and  the  import  of  English  cloth 
were  forbidden,  while  the  whole  army  was  clothed  in  local 
products.  Recognising  that  he  had  plenty  of  other  occupation 
without  dabbling  in  colonial  expansion,  Frederick  William 
abandoned  the  ill-fated  African  enterprise  of  the  Great  Elector, 
and  not  even  the  acquisition  of  Stettin  tempted  him  to  try 
to  develop  an  oversea  commerce.  He  sought  to  improve  the 
social,  and  economic  conditions  of  his  subjects,  but  for  a  very 
definite  purpose.  His  aim  was  to  improve  their  condition 
“  not  by  lightening  their  burdens,  but  by  increasing  their 
capacity  for  bearing  burdens.”  For  in  all  these  reforms,  in  the 
centralising  of  the  administration,  in  the  increase  and  improve¬ 
ment  of  the  Domains,  in  the  accumulation  of  a  great  reserve 
war  fund,  in  the  bureaucratic  organisation  of  the  State  under 
an  autocratic  ruler,  Frederick  William’s  great  aim  was  to 
enable  Prussia  to  support  that  large  army,  so  out  of  all 
proportion  to  her  territory  and  her  population,  which  could 
alone  give  her  weight  in  the  councils  of  Europe.  It  was  as  a 
military  state  that  Prussia  was  organised,  to  the  Army  that 
everything  else  was  sacrificed,  military  power  that  was  the 
object  for  which  the  Prussian  kingdom  existed.  He  is, 
perhaps,  chiefly  remembered  on  account  of  his  favourite  corps, 
the  celebrated  but  not  very  serviceable  “  Potsdam  Grenadiers  ”  ; 
but  it  would  be  a  grave  error  to  let  the  solid  merit  of  his 
military  achievements  be  concealed  behind  their  ranks.  It  is 
a  remarkable  fact  that  Frederick  William,  one  of  the  most 
successful  organisers  of  an  army  there  has  ever  been,  should 
have  been  one  of  the  most  pacific  and  least  belligerent  of 
rulers.  His  military  fame  must  rest  upon  the  army  he  built 
up  and  bequeathed  to  his  son,  not  on  what  he  himself  did 
with  it ;  and  yet  that  is  a  secure  enough  foundation  for  any 
reputation.  If  he  cannot  be  reckoned  more  than  “  a  very 
good  peace  general,”  it  is  because  he  did  not  attempt  to 
test  the  weapon  he  had  forged,  not  because  he  tried  and 
failed. 

The  Prussian  army  at  the  accession  of  Frederick  William  I 
mustered  some  38,000  men.1  The  new  King’s  first  step 
was  to  raise  seven  more  regiments,  and  every  political 

1  There  was  also  a  reserve  in  the  shape  of  a  Land  Militia  about  10,000  strong 
for  home  service  or  garrison  duty,  but  it  was  before  long  disbanded  as  of  little 
military  value. 


1 74°]  PRUSSIA  UNDER  FREDERICK  WILLIAM  I 


9i 


incident  or  complication  was  eagerly  used  as  an  excuse 
for  fresh  additions.  By  1725  the  army  had  been  in¬ 
creased  to  60  battalions  of  infantry  and  100  squadrons 
of  cavalry,  a  total,  with  garrison  troops,  of  64,000  men, 
of  whom  about  10,000  dep6t  and  garrison  troops  were  not 
available  for  field  service.  By  1740  its  numbers  had  risen 
to  89,000,  the  field  army  comprising  66  battalions,  114 
squadrons,  including  9  of  hussars,  6  companies  of  field  and 
4  of  fortress  artillery,  and  a  Life  Guard  of  2500,  the  famous 
“  Potsdam  Grenadiers/’  But  it  was  not  merely  its  numbers 
which  gave  it  importance.  No  effort  was  spared  to  in¬ 
crease  its  efficiency.  A  harsh  and  stern  system  of  discipline 
was  introduced  and  rigorously  maintained.  The  utmost 
care  was  devoted  to  the  exercising  and  training  of  the 
troops.  Their  drill  was  revolutionised  by  the  introduction 
of  a  cadenced  step  and  the  reduction  of  the  depth  of 
formation  from  six  ranks  to  three,  both  due  to  Leopold  of 
Anhalt-Dessau.  In  all  manoeuvres  a  high  standard  was  set 
up  and  reached,  thus  enabling  the  Prussian  regiments  to 
change  from  one  formation  to  another  with  a  rapidity  and 
precision  which  was  the  wonder  of  the  age.  The  movements 
of  the  parade-ground  were  accurately  reproduced  on  the 
battlefield  in  a  way  which  gave  the  Prussian  generals  a 
great  advantage  over  less  flexible  and  mobile  opponents, 
who  found  it  a  matter  of  the  greatest  difficulty  to  change 
a  position  which  they  had  once  taken  up,  as  their  troops, 
being  less  carefully  drilled,  were  apt  to  fall  into  confusion 
when  they  attempted  to  manoeuvre  in  face  of  an  enemy. 
Moreover,  better  discipline  meant  better  fire-discipline,  and  the 
introduction  of  iron  ramrods  allowed  a  greater  rapidity  of  fire. 
As  a  potent  factor  in  producing  a  high  state  of  efficiency  the 
well-developed  regimental  system  must  not  be  forgotten.  Of 
the  value  of  esprit  de  corps  Frederick  William  had  a  high 
opinion,  and  in  his  distribution  of  rewards  and  punishments  he 
laid  great  stress  upon  it.  Moreover,  the  partial  territorialisation 
of  the  army  encouraged  a  local  feeling  which  helped  to  foster 
this  regimental  spirit. 

To  keep  this  great  army  up  to  its  established  strength  was 
no  very  easy  task,  seeing  that  in  population  Prussia  stood  as 
low  as  twelfth  among  the  countries  of  Europe,  and  that  the 
army  had  to  be  raised  by  voluntary  enlistment.  It  was  found 


92  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1713- 


necessary,  therefore,  to  supplement  the  local  recruits  by  send¬ 
ing  out  recruiting-officers  into  the  neighbouring  countries, 
especially  into  the  Imperial  Cities.  The  Prussian  recruiters 
made  themselves  notorious  from  Scandinavia  to  Transylvania, 
and  from  the  Liffey  to  the  Niemen ;  they  were  a  constant 
source  of  friction  with  the  authorities  of  other  states,  besides 
being  a  heavy  expense.1 

It  was  the  difficulty  and  the  great  expense  2  of  keeping  up 
a  voluntary  army  of  the  size  which  the  King  desired  which  at 
last  decided  Frederick  William  to  adopt  a  system  of  modified 
conscription.  In  September  1733  he  issued  his  famous 
“  cantoning  scheme,”  by  which  the  country  was  divided  into 
cantons,  to  which  regiments  were  assigned  for  recruiting  pur¬ 
poses,  a  regiment  of  infantry  being  allotted  6000  “  hearths,”  one 
of  cavalry  1800.  Universal  liability  to  service  was  recognised 
though  with  very  liberal  exemptions  in  favour  of  the  nobles, 
the  professional  classes  and  certain  trades  which  it  was  desired 
to  specially  encourage.  This  provided  a  fairly  regular  supply 
of  recruits,  but  it  was  eked  out  by  the  enlistment  of  mercenaries 
on  a  large  scale,  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  in  1768  only  about 
half  the  army  was  composed  of  native  Prussians,  and  at  times 
during  the  Seven  Years’  War  the  proportion  must  have  sunk 
even  lower.  One  object  in  thus  hiring  foreigners  was  to  let 
the  native  subjects  of  Frederick  devote  themselves  to  pro¬ 
ductive  pursuits  such  as  agriculture  and  manufactures,  so  that 
they  might  not  be  withdrawn  from  increasing  the  resources 
and  tax-paying  capacities  of  the  kingdom.  In  time  of  peace, 
too,  the  native  conscripts  were  only  with  the  colours  for  a 
quarter  of  the  year,  being  on  unpaid  furlough  for  the  remain¬ 
ing  nine  months.  The  presence  of  the  large  proportion  of 
foreigners  of  doubtful  allegiance,  together  with  the  great  harsh¬ 
ness  of  the  discipline  and  the  many  hardships  of  the  soldier’s 
lot,  provides  a  sufficient  explanation  of  the  great  prevalence  of 
desertion  in  the  Prussian  army. 

With  the  double  purpose  of  bringing  the  nobles  into  closer 
touch  with  the  Crown  through  the  army,  and  of  fostering 


1  A  quarrel  of  this  kind  in  1729  nearly  brought  about  a  war  between  Prussia  and 
Hanover,  some  Prussian  recruiters  having  been  arrested  in  Hanover,  where  the 
shelter  given  by  the  Prussian  army  to  Hanoverian  deserters  was  much  resented. 

2  Out  of  the  7,000,000  thalers  to  which  the  total  revenue  amounted  in  1740,  no 
less  than  5,000,000  were  expended  on  the  Army. 


1740]  PRUSSIA  UNDER  FREDERICK  WILLIAM  I  93 

among  them  discipline  and  the  military  spirit,  Frederick 
William  drew  his  officers  almost  exclusively  from  the  native 
nobility,  who  had  hitherto  held  somewhat  aloof  from  the  service. 
The  exaggerated  militarism  so  characteristic  of  the  Prussian 
“Junker”  is  due  in  large  measure  to  this  move  on  his  part, 
while  the  great  social  gulf  between  officers  and  men  made  it 
easier  to  maintain  that  strict  discipline  and  that  rigid  sub¬ 
ordination  of  the  lower  ranks  which  were  such  marked  features 
of  the  Prussian  system.  At  the  same  time,  it  was  made  very 
clear  that  the  army  was  the  King’s  army,  that  the  officers  were 
the  King’s  servants  and  their  men  the  King’s  men  rather  than 
theirs.  There  was  a  struggle  before  the  King  could  gain  the 
complete  control  over  the  appointment  of  the  officers  and  over 
the  internal  administrative  economy  of  the  regiments,  but  in  the 
end  he  prevailed,  and  the  completeness  of  his  victory  marked 
a  great  stride  forwards  towards  absolutism. 

With  so  strong  a  force  at  his  disposal  the  unimportant 
part  played  by  Frederick  William  in  international  affairs  is 
a  little  surprising.  This  was  partly  due  to  his  natural  caution 
and  self-control.  Unless  he  saw  the  issues  clearly,  he  would 
not  let  ambition  or  adventurousness  plunge  him  into  any 
hazardous  or  uncertain  enterprise.  Moreover,  he  was  never 
presented  with  such  an  opportunity  as  that  which  Charles  Vi’s 
death  placed  before  Frederick  II.  Frederick  William  liked  to 
know  how  far  he  was  committing  himself,  and  preferred  to 
gain  his  ends  by  peaceful  means,  or,  at  any  rate,  with  the 
minimum  outlay  of  blood  or  money.  It  was  most  characteristic 
of  him  that  in  his  one  warlike  enterprise,  his  share  in  the 
Northern  War,  he  was  fairly  successful  without  acquiring 
thereby  anything  of  a  military  reputation.  With  his  other 
great  object,  the  acquisition  of  Jiilich  and  Berg,  he  was  less 
fortunate  than  with  his  designs  on  Pomerania ;  but  it  is  never¬ 
theless  the  key  to  his  policy,  more  especially  to  his  relations 
with  the  Emperor. 

The  truth  of  the  matter  was  that  Prussia  was  not  on  good 
terms  with  the  majority  of  her  neighbours,  more  especially 
with  Saxony  and  Hanover,  the  other  leading  Protestant  Powers 
of  Germany  with  whom  she  might  have  been  expected  to  be 
friendly.  But  Saxony  through  her  connection  with  Poland 
was  the  possessor  of  the  coveted  West  Prussia,  while  between 
Planover  and  the  Hohenzollern  there  were  many  causes  of 


94  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1726- 


hostility.  Hanover  had  utilised  the  Mecklenburg  affair 1  to 
plant  herself  firmly  in  that  territory,  and  did  not  evacuate 
it  until  some  time  after  the  Emperor  had  deposed  Duke 
Charles  Leopold  and  replaced  him  by  Christian  Louis, 
his  brother  (May  1728),  and  declared  the  Imperial  edict 
( Reichexecution )  void,  her  defence  for  the  continued  occupation 
being  that  the  costs  of  the  execution  had  not  been  paid.2 
East  Frisia,  where  the  Cirksena  family  was  on  the  point  of 
dying  out,  was  another  open  question.  Hanover  claimed  it 
under  a  “  blood- brotherhood  ”  made  in  1693  ;  Prussia’s  claims 
upon  it  had  been  admitted  by  the  Emperor  at  the  time  of  the 
restitution  of  Schwiebus  in  1692.  But  beyond  this  there  was 
personal  ill-feeling  between  the  two  reigning  families  :  George  I 
had  not  been  on  good  terms  with  Frederick  William,  and 
George  Il’s  feelings  towards  his  brother-in-law  were  exceed¬ 
ingly  hostile,  though  at  the  time  of  the  League  of  Herren- 
haiisen  (1 725),  Townshend  so  far  overcame  the  hostility  between 
George  1  and  Frederick  William  as  to  enlist  Prussia  on  the 
same  side  as  Hanover.3 

But  the  adherence  of  Prussia  to  the  Maritime  Powers  was 
not  of  long  duration.  In  October  1726,  Frederick  William, 
finding  that  he  could  get  nothing  from  England  and  France 
but  vague  promises  of  support  in  the  matter  of  Jtilich  and 
Berg,  and  having  no  intention  of  being  involved  in  a  war  with 

1  Cf.  p.  69. 

2  Christian  Louis  obtained  control  of  Mecklenburg,  though  not  without  difficulty, 
and  finally  succeeded  his  brother  as  Duke  in  1747. 

3  It  is  important  to  notice  that  to  the  English  Ministers  Prussia  seemed  a  natural 
ally.  This  may  be  traced  all  through  the  relations  of  Prussia  with  England  and 
Hanover ;  those  English  Ministers  who  hoped  to  hold  their  enemies,  whether  Spain 
or  France,  in  check  by  alliances  with  the  German  Powers,  looked  upon  securing  the 
alliance  of  Prussia  as  an  essential  step.  Thus  one  finds  Sir  Thomas  Robinson 
endeavouring  to  reconcile  Maria  Theresa  to  the  robber  of  Silesia,  while  Walpole 
favoured  an  alliance  with  Prussia  for  political  and  commercial  reasons,  but  found 
himself  opposed  by  Hanoverian  prejudices  and  hatred  of  Prussia.  Horace  Walpole 
(the  elder)  writes  to  point  out  the  importance  of  gaining  Prussia  to  the  side  of  the 
Maritime  Powers  ( Trevor  MSS.,  Hist.  MSS.  Commission,  p.  50;  cf.  p.  51: 
“  Europe,  England,  and  Hanover  want  a  political  union  and  intimacy,  and  as  the 
safety  of  England  depends  on  the  balance  of  Europe,  I  think  I  can  demonstrate  that 
the  security  of  Hanover  depends  on  both  :  here  I  fix  my  point  of  view,  and  shall  date 
the  duration  of  our  apparent  friendship  with  Berlin  upon  the  measures  pursued  for 
this  end”).  But  “  His  Majesty  (George  11)  continues  very  averse  to  do  anything  that 
squints  in  the  least  towards  favouring  the  King  of  Prussia”  {ibid.  p.  5).  Again, 
Hanoverian  hostility  to  Prussia  plays  a  part,  though  it  has  to  give  way  in  the  end,  in 
the  negotiations  which  culminated  in  the  Treaty  of  Westminster  of  1756  ;  cf.  pp.  186  ff. 


1738]  PRUSSIA  UNDER  FREDERICK  WILLIAM  I 


95 


Austria  and  Russia  in  defence  of  Hanover,  allowed  Count 
Seckendorff  to  win  him  over  to  the  side  of  Austria ;  and  the 
Emperor  promised  to  try  to  induce  the  Sulzbach  branch  of 
the  Wittelsbachs  to  agree  to  the  compromise  which  Frederick 
William  was  ready  to  accept.1  The  matter  stood  in  this  state : 
Charles  Philip  of  Neuburg,  the  Elector  Palatine,  who  held 
Jiilich  and  Berg  in  virtue  of  the  1666  compact,  had  no  son, 
his  brother,  Francis  Louis,  Elector  of  Treves,  was,  of  course, 
unmarried,  so  that  the  next  heir  was  Theodore,  Count  Palatine 
of  Sulzbach  (1 708-1 73  2).2  The  Hohenzollern  therefore 
claimed  that  Jiilich  and  Berg  should  fall  to  them  on  the  failure 
of  the  males  of  the  Neuburg  line;  but  Joseph  of  Sulzbach, 
eldest  son  of  Theodore,  put  in  a  claim  both  on  his  own 
behalf  as  descended  from  the  Dukes  of  Cleves  and  in  virtue 
of  his  wife,  Elizabeth,  the  eldest  daughter  of  Charles  Philip.3 
The  Emperor  also  had  something  of  a  claim,  his  mother  having 
been  a  sister  of  Charles  Philip  ;  but  this  he  declared  himself 
ready  to  waive,  resigning  Jiilich  to  the  Sulzbachs,  Berg  and 
Ravenstein  to  Prussia,  if  both  would  agree.4  Upon  this 
the  treaty  of  1726  with  Prussia  was  converted  into  a 
definite  alliance,  Prussia  guaranteeing  the  Pragmatic  Sanction 
and  pledging  her  support  to  the  Emperor,  more  particularly 
to  the  husband  of  Maria  Theresa,  who  would  be  the  natural 
Hapsburg  candidate  for  the  next  vacancy  in  the  Empire. 
But  the  pledges  which  Austria  gave  to  Prussia  on  this  subject 
were  of  a  rather  vague  and  indefinite  character  ;  the  Hapsburgs 
had  no  great  wish  to  see  the  Hohenzollern  in  these  Duchies 
rather  than  the  Sulzbachs  who  were  Catholics,  and  it  must 
be  admitted  that  Charles  VI  played  fast  and  loose  with 
Prussia  in  the  matter ;  for  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  the  assent 
of  the  Sulzbachs  to  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  the  Emperor 
endeavoured  to  come  to  terms  with  them  over  Jiilich  and 
Berg,  and  to  mollify  them  by  inducing  Prussia  to  assent  to 
a  compromise  decidedly  in  their  favour.  Thus  the  matter 
lingered  on  till,  in  February  1738,  Austria,  England,  France 
and  Holland  presented  identical  notes  calling  upon  Prussia 
and  the  Sulzbachs  to  submit  the  question  to  a  conference. 
To  this  Frederick  William  refused  to  agree,  and  conscious  of 
his  isolation  and  of  Austria’s  preference  for  the  Sulzbachs,  he 

1  Cf.  Z.61.  ii.  628.  3  Ibid. 

2  Cf.  Wittelsbach  Genealogy,  p.  707.  4  Erdmannsdorffer,  ii.  427. 


96  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1730 


decided  to  make  overtures  to  France  and  so  secure  a  means 
of  putting  pressure  on  the  Emperor.  Fleury,  with  the 
prospect  of  being  involved  in  the  impending  Anglo-Spanish 
war,  was  glad  of  the  chance  of  securing  himself  against 
Prussia’s  hostility,  as  he  feared  she  might  be  subsidised  to 
take  part  with  England.  In  April  1739  a  treaty  was 
signed  by  which  France  promised  to  induce  Charles  Philip 
to  agree  to  a  partition  which  would  leave  most  of  Ravenstein 
and  Berg  to  Prussia,  while  compensating  the  Sulzbachs  with 
the  remainder  of  the  territory  in  dispute.  A  secret  article 
further  pledged  Prussia  to  closer  co-operation  with  France. 
But  had  it  been  the  father  and  not  the  son  who  was  on  the 
Prussian  throne  at  the  moment  when  the  death  of  Charles  VI 
opened  a  question  of  the  most  momentous  importance  to 
Germany,  it  would  hardly  have  been  in  accord  with  the  whole 
tenor  of  Frederick  William’s  policy  to  have  allowed  this 
treaty  to  commit  him  to  anything  like  the  action  which 
Frederick  11  took.  Not  even  the  treatment  he  had  received 
over  Jiilich  and  Berg  would  have  quite  induced  the  cautious 
Frederick  William  to  bring  French  armies  into  the  heart  of 
Germany. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  LAST  WARS  OF  CHARLES  VI 

I  T  is  only  from  the  study  in  disorganisation  and  misfortune 
presented  by  the  Hapsburg  monarchy  in  the  last  two 
wars  in  which  the  luckless  Charles  VI  engaged,  that  one  can 
fairly  estimate  the  perilous  nature  of  the  crisis  which  his  death 
precipitated.  The  Emperor’s  own  shortcomings  as  a  ruler  had 
no  doubt  much  to  answer  for,  but  they  were  aggravated  by  the 
persistent  misfortune  which  followed  him  throughout  his  career. 

At  the  moment  when  the  death  of  Frederick  Augustus 
of  Saxony-Poland  (Feb.  1733)  opened  the  ever  thorny 
question  of  the  succession  to  that  realm  of  troubles,  the  old 
system  which  had  united  Austria,  the  Maritime  Powers  and 
the  minor  states  of  Germany  against  France  and  Spain 
seemed  about  to  be  revived.  The  bonds  of  the  Anglo- 
P'rench  alliance  were  slackening,  and  anyone  with  a  less 
purely  insular  attitude  than  Walpole  must  have  seen  that  the 
change  in  the  relations  of  France  and  Spain  brought  about 
by  the  birth  of  the  Dauphin  must  materially  affect  the  footing 
on  which  England  stood  towards  her  old  enemy  but  present 
ally.  To  some  extent  the  old  relations  between  England  and 
Austria  had  been  restored  by  Walpole’s  guarantee  of  the 
Pragmatic  Sanction,  and  Hanoverian  traditions  made  George  II 
favour  supporting  the  Emperor. 

However,  when  through  the  old  connection  between  France 
and  Poland  the  succession  question  developed  into  a  general 
European  war,  the  Anglo-French  alliance  proved  strong 
enough  yet  to  keep  England  out  of  the  strife.  The  new 
Elector  of  Saxony,  Augustus  III  as  Elector  but  Frederick 
Augustus  II  as  King  of  Poland,  came  forward  at  once  as  a 
candidate  for  the  Polish  throne,  and  succeeded  in  securing 
Austria’s  support  by  guaranteeing  the  Pragmatic  Sanction, 
and  abandoning  for  himself  and  his  wife,  the  eldest  daughter 
of  Joseph  I,  all  claims  on  the  Hapsburg  dominions.  Russia 
7 


98  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1733 


he  won  over  by  a  promise  to  cede  Courland  to  Count  Biron, 
Catherine’s  favourite.  Russia  and  Austria  had  not  at  first 
meant  to  support  the  Saxon,  and  had  actually  agreed  with 
Prussia  to  adopt  as  their  candidate  Prince  Emmanuel  of 
Portugal.1  But  when  the  time  came  Emmanuel  was  found 
to  be  most  unsuitable,  and,  moreover,  Russia  had  never 
ratified  the  treaty.  Thus,  much  to  the  disgust  of  Frederick 
William,  to  whom  the  presence  of  the  Saxon  line  at 
Warsaw  was  most  distasteful,  the  Lowenwolde  arrangement 
was  thrown  over,  and  with  it  slipped  away  the  chance 
that  something  might  be  done  for  Augustus  William, 
Frederick  William’s  second  son.  The  opposition  to  Augustus 
of  Saxony  came  from  the  elements  which  were  opposed  to 
Russian  influence,  the  “National”  party,  which  adopted  with 
enthusiasm  the  cause  of  the  ex-King  Stanislaus  Leczinski, 
who  was  put  forward  by  his  son-in-law,  Louis  XV.  So  large 
indeed  was  the  party  in  Leczinski’s  favour  that  it  carried  the 
day  at  the  election  (Sept.  1733),  but  the  intervention  of 
a  Russian  army  put  the  adherents  of  Stanislaus  to  flight,  and 
enabled  the  Saxon  party  to  proclaim  Augustus  as  King  (Oct. 
5  th).  Stanislaus  did  indeed  reach  Dantzic,  and  stood  a  siege 
there;  but  France  was  unable  to  send  him  any  effective  aid, 
fearing  to  arouse  English  and  Dutch  jealousy  by  sending  a  squad¬ 
ron  into  the  Baltic,  and  in  July  1734  Dantzic  had  to  surrender. 

However,  if  Austria  and  Russia  had  carried  the  day  in 
Poland,  the  entanglement  of  Austria  in  the  Polish  war  gave 
France  and  Spain  an  opportunity  too  tempting  to  be  allowed 
to  pass.  As  a  diversion  in  favour  of  Stanislaus,  France  had 
overrun  Lorraine  in  the  summer  of  1733,  and  Marshal 
Berwick  had  laid  siege  to  Kehl,  taking  it  on  October  28th; 
the  defenceless  state  of  Austrian  Italy,  denuded  of  troops  for 
the  war  in  Poland,  proved  an  irresistible  attraction  to  the 
covetous  Elizabeth  Farnese,  and  Charles  Emmanuel  III  of 
Savoy  eagerly  grasped  at  so  good  a  chance  of  further  acquisi¬ 
tions  in  Lombardy  at  the  expense  of  Austria.  Chauvelin 
therefore  found  little  difficulty  about  negotiating  treaties 
between  France  and  Savoy,2  and  between  Spain  and  France  ;3 
but  the  jealousy  which  the  Savoyards  entertained  towards 
Spain  prevented  these  two  alliances  being  combined  in  a 

1  Treaty  of  Lowenwolde  (1732). 

2  Turin  (Sept.  1733). 


3  The  Escurial  (Nov.  1733). 


1733]  THE  LAST  WARS  OF  CHARLES  VI 


99 


triple  alliance.  The  Emperor  thus  found  himself  threatened  in 
Italy  and  in  Germany  with  a  Franco-Spanish  attack,  but  the 
Allies  from  whom  he  might  have  hoped  to  receive  assistance 
failed  him  in  his  hour  of  need.  Walpole  allowed  Fleury’s 
promise  that  the  neutrality  of  the  Austrian  Netherlands 
should  be  respected  to  lure  him  into  leaving  the  Emperor  in 
the  lurch,  a  piece  of  short-sightedness  which  was  to  cost  his 
country  dear  before  ten  years  had  passed.  It  would  not  be 
too  much  to  say  that  if  the  Maritime  Powers  had  come  to 
the  aid  of  Austria  in  1733  the  question  of  the  Austrian 
Succession  might  have  never  led  to  a  war.  It  was  very 
largely  the  failure  of  Austria  in  this  war,  and  in  the  disastrous 
Turkish  war  which  she  undertook  partly  in  the  hope  of  obtain¬ 
ing  compensation  for  the  loss  of  Naples,  which  encouraged 
her  enemies  to  entertain  the  idea  of  partitioning  her  dominions 
in  1741.  Nor  did  Walpole’s  pacific  policy  in  1733  achieve 
his  object  by  ultimately  averting  the  war  with  Spain  over 
the  West  Indies.  In  the  war  of  the  Austrian  Succession, 
England  had  to  carry  on  a  maritime  and  colonial  war  and  at 
the  same  time  to  assist  Maria  Theresa  to  check  a  career  of 
conquest  on  the  part  of  the  Plouse  of  Bourbon,  which  might 
never  have  been  begun  had  a  revived  Grand  Alliance  success¬ 
fully  withstood  France  and  Spain  in  1733— 1734.  More¬ 
over,  in  1733,  Frederick  William,  and  not,  as  in  1740,  his 
more  ambitious  and  grasping  son,  was  on  the  Prussian  throne, 
and  it  would  not  have  been  very  difficult  to  obtain  with  English 
subsidies  the  assistance  of  that  Prussian  army  which  was  to 
deal  Austria  more  than  one  stab  in  the  back  between  1740 
and  1745.  Eugene,  too,  was  still  alive,  and  with  proper 
support  might  still  have  done  good  service.  And  if  Austria 
had  not  been  humiliated  and  beaten  between  1733  and  1738, 
if  she  had  not  suffered  the  losses  of  those  years,  and  if  her 
weakness  had  not  been  thereby  exposed,  Frederick  II  might 
well  have  hesitated  before  he  dashed  at  Silesia  in  December 
1740.  It  was  because  he  saw  that  Austria  was  weaker  than 
France  that  he  seized  upon  Silesia,  upon  which  he  had  no 
claim,  rather  than  on  Jlilich  and  Berg,  to  which  he  certainly  had 
some  right.  And  that  Austria  was  weak  and  a  tempting  prey 
to  the  spoilers  was  in  large  measure  due  to  the  fact  that  Walpole 
had  preferred  a  temporary  continuance  of  an  insecure  peace  to 
opening  his  eyes  to  the  true  facts  of  the  European  situation. 


100  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1734 


One  ally  Charles  might  have  secured  :  Frederick  William 
of  Prussia  offered  to  lead  his  whole  army  to  the  Rhine,  but 
only  on  condition  of  receiving  an  almost  absolutely  free  hand, 
terms  which  even  Eugene  was  somewhat  unwilling  to  grant 
him.  The  Diet,  it  is  true,  did  declare  war  (Jan.  1734) 
on  France,  but  the  utility  of  this  declaration  was  diminished 
by  the  refusal  of  the  three  Wittelsbach  Electors,  Bavaria, 
Cologne  and  the  Palatinate,  to  join  in  the  resistance  to  the 
French.1  That  the  campaign  on  the  Rhine  in  1734  should 
have  gone  altogether  in  favour  of  the  French  was  therefore  not 
surprising.  A  detached  corps  secured  Treves  and  Trarbach, 
while  the  main  army  under  Berwick  besieged  Philipsburg. 
Eugene  was  given  the  command  of  the  force  designed  to 
relieve  it,  but  neither  the  quantity  nor  the  quality  of  his  forces 
gave  him  any  satisfaction  ;  his  auxiliaries  were  very  slow  to 
arrive,  and  when,  Berwick  having  been  killed  in  the  trenches 
(June  1  2th),  the  Austrian  commander  did  move  up  to  attempt 
the  relief  of  the  fortress,  the  faint-hearted  von  Wutgenau 
surrendered  (July  18th),  almost  under  the  eyes  of  the  relievers. 
The  new  French  commander,  d’Asfeld,  then  moved  on 
Mayence,  but  Eugene  interposed  so  as  to  cover  the  city,  and 
d’Asfeld  relapsed  into  inactivity.  Next  year  things  went  no 
better.  The  Elector  of  Bavaria  mobilised  his  forces  in  rear 
of  the  Imperial  army,  and  his  hostile  attitude  prevented  Eugene 
from  doing  anything  beyond  covering  Mayence  and  the  passes 
over  the  Black  Forest.  Even  when  1 2,000  Russians  reached 
Heidelberg  (August),  all  that  could  be  done  was  to  force 
Charles  Albert  of  Bavaria  to  dismiss  his  troops.  Had  the 
French  been  more  energetic  they  might  have  repeated  with 
every  prospect  of  success  the  stroke  which  Marlborough  had 
foiled  in  1704,  but  their  inactivity  was  partly  due  to  a  desire 
not  to  rouse  the  minor  states  of  South-West  Germany  into 
active  measures  of  defence.  The  operations  on  the  Rhine 
were  only  important  inasmuch  as  they  diverted  Austria’s 
attention  from  Italy.  There  the  success  of  the  Allies  had 
been  even  more  pronounced ;  the  French  and  Sardinians 
gradually  drove  the  Austrians  out  of  Lombardy,  and,  despite 
Mercy’s  stubborn  resistance  at  Parma  (June  29th,  1734) 
and  Konigsegg’s  victory  on  the  Sesia  (Sept.  15th,  1734), 

1  Good  relations  between  the  Bavarian  and  Palatine  branches  had  been  restored 
by  the  conclusion  of  a  family  compact  in  1724. 


1735]  THE  LAST  WARS  OF  CHARLES  VI 


IOI 


forced  them  after  a  defeat  at  Guastalla  (Sept.  19th,  1734) 
to  fall  back  into  the  Tyrol  and  leave  Mantua  exposed  :  mean¬ 
while  the  Spaniards  overran  the  Two  Sicilies  with  consummate 
ease.  Almost  without  a  blow  they  possessed  themselves  of 
Naples;  by  the  end  of  1733  only  Capua  remained  in  Austrian 
hands  and  nearly  all  Sicily  had  been  lost,  the  rest  following  suit 
early  in  1734.  It  was  only  the  quarrels  of  the  Allies  that 
prevented  them  from  ousting  the  Austrians  altogether  from 
Italy  in  1735  ;  but  the  rivalry  of  Sardinia  and  Spain  proved  the 
salvation  of  Mantua,  and  allowed  Khevenhiiller  and  Neipperg 
to  maintain  their  positions  on  Lake  Garda  and  the  Adige. 

By  the  autumn  of  1735  even  Charles  VI  had  to  confess 
himself  worsted :  deserted  by  his  allies,  slackly  supported  by 
the  rest  of  Germany,  at  the  end  of  his  resources,  and  with  a 
Turkish  war  impending,  he  had  no  option  but  to  make  peace. 
The  Preliminaries  of  Vienna  were  signed  with  France  in 
October  1735,  and  ratified  in  November,1  though  it  was  not 
till  1739  that  the  definite  assent  of  Spain  and  of  Sardinia 
was  obtained.  France  abandoned  Leczinski’s  candidature  for 
Poland,  but  as  a  compensation  he  received  the  Duchy  of  Bar, 
with  a  promise  of  Lorraine ;  this  he  was  to  obtain  as  soon  as 
the  death  of  the  last  Medici  should  have  set  Tuscany  free  to 
be  handed  over  to  Francis  Stephen  of  Lorraine  as  a  compensa¬ 
tion  for  the  loss  of  his  ancestral  dominions.  At  Leczinski’s 
death  his  possessions  were  to  pass  to  France.  It  was  a  severe 
blow  to  the  Empire,  though  severer  to  Francis  Stephen,  from 
whom  a  reluctant  consent  was  purchased  by  his  marriage  to 
Maria  Theresa  (Feb.  1736),  while  Fleury  had  the  satisfaction 
of  having  associated  his  name  with  one  of  the  most  important 
of  the  territorial  acquisitions  of  France.  The  Emperor  also 
had  to  cede  the  Two  Sicilies  to  Don  Carlos,  and  Novara  and 
Tortona  to  Charles  Emmanuel,  but  he  recovered  Parma  and 
Piacenza.  Naples  was  a  serious  loss,  since  its  wealth  had 
made  it  a  very  valuable  and  profitable  possession ;  but  the 
South  Italian  dominions  had  been  isolated  and  very  difficult 
to  defend,  and  the  territories  left  to  Austria  in  the  valley  of 
the  Po  were  much  more  compact.  Finally,  the  Empire 
recovered  Kehl,  Philipsburg,  Treves  and  Trarbach,  and 
Charles  VI  obtained  from  France  a  recognition,  though  a 
recognition  so  conditioned  and  safeguarded  as  to  be  quite 

1  The  definite  peace  between  France  and  Austria  was  signed  on  Nov.  8th,  1 73^* 


102  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1736 


ambiguous,  of  the  Pragmatic  Sanction.  It  is  also  noteworthy 
that  the  “  Ryswick  clause,”  the  abolition  of  which  had  been 
demanded  by  those  Protestant  members  who  voted  for  the 
war,  was  not  mentioned  in  the  1738  treaty;  and  this  was 
taken  by  the  Protestants  to  be  equivalent  to  cancellation,  a 
view  in  which  the  Catholics  practically  acquiesced. 

Shortly  after  the  preliminaries  had  been  ratified  Eugene 
died  (April  21st,  1736).  Though  not  himself  of  German 
birth,  he  had  been  in  peace  almost  as  much  as  in  war  the  main¬ 
stay  of  the  Empire  under  the  last  three  Emperors.  He  had  just 
outlived  the  marriage  of  Maria  Theresa  to  Francis  Stephen  ;  he 
must  be  considered  fortunate  in  that  he  did  not  live  to  see  the 
work  of  his  last  great  victory  undone  in  the  unfortunate  Turkish 
war  of  1737-1739,  in  which  Charles  now  became  involved. 

It  was  partly  in  fulfilment  of  his  obligations  to  Russia, 
undertaken  when  Catherine  guaranteed  the  Pragmatic  Sanction 
in  1726,  but  also  with  the  idea  of  recouping  his  losses  in  Italy 
at  the  expense  of  Turkey,  that,  at  a  time  when  peace,  financial 
retrenchment  and  careful  reorganisation  were  the  crying  needs 
of  the  Hapsburg  monarchy,  Charles  VI  embarked  in  a  fresh 
war.  Russia  had  declared  war  on  Turkey  in  1735  on  the 
pretext  that  the  Tartars,  when  attacking  Persia,  had  violated 
the  neutrality  of  Russian  territory.  Not  being  altogether 
successful  in  the  campaigns  of  1735— 1736,  she  called  upon 
Austria  for  the  assistance  which  the  Treaty  of  1726  pledged 
the  Hapsburgs  to  send.  There  were  great  debates  as  to 
the  course  which  Austria  should  adopt ;  she  might  content 
herself  with  sending  30,000  men  as  auxiliaries  and  yet 
remain  neutral  as  a  whole,  as  Seckendorff  and  Palffy,  the 
Palatine  of  Hungary,  suggested  ;  or  she  might  embark  upon 
the  war  as  a  full  partner  in  the  enterprise.  Bartenstein,  now 
coming  to  the  front  as  Secretary  to  the  Austrian  Conference, 
was  in  favour  of  the  latter  plan  ;  and  it  would  appear  that  it 
was  to  this  that  Charles  VI  himself  inclined.  The  position 
of  a  mere  auxiliary  was  hardly  consonant  with  his  Imperial 
dignity,  and  therefore,  though  Poland  and  Venice  held  aloof, 
though  his  German  vassals  failed  to  support  him,  and  in  some 
cases  absolutely  refused  to  help,  though  hardly  any  part  of 
the  aid  which  the  Diet  voted  ever  reached  the  Emperor’s 
coffers,  though  the  condition  of  the  Austrian  army,  ad¬ 
ministration  and  finances  certainly  did  not  warrant  any  such 


1739]  THE  LAST  WARS  OF  CHARLES  VI 


103 

enterprise,  he  resolved  to  take  part  with  his  whole  force  in  the 
campaign  of  1  737. 

The  military  operations  began  with  a  fair  measure  of 
success.  Seckendorff  invaded  Servia  and  took  Nissa  (July 
23rd);  but  undue  division  of  forces,  failure  to  keep  touch 
between  the  different  corps,  and  the  quarrels  and  jealousies  of 
the  commanders,  produced  the  natural  result,  the  Turks  got 
the  best  of  some  minor  affairs,  and  their  successes  spread  to 
the  main  operations.  Saxe-Hildburghausen  was  forced  back 
from  Banjaluka  in  Bosnia  to  Gradiska  on  the  Save ;  Kheven- 
hiiller  failed  in  an  attempt  on  Widdin;  and  Nissa,  the  sole 
prize  of  the  campaign,  was  lost  within  two  months  of  its 
capture.  Seckendorff,  who  as  a  Protestant  and  a  foreigner 
was  unpopular  with  the  other  generals  and  had  little  control 
over  them,  was  rather  unfairly  made  the  scapegoat  for  the 
general  failure :  he  was  court-martialed  and  imprisoned ;  but 
his  successor,  Konigsegg,  did  little  better  in  1738.  He  did 
defeat  the  Turks  at  Mehadia,  and  force  them  to  evacuate 
Orsova,  but  he  was  unable  to  take  Widdin ;  and  far  from 
following  up  a  success  he  won  at  Cornia  in  July,  by  the  end 
of  the  year  he  had  been  driven  in  under  the  walls  of  Belgrade, 
and,  like  Seckendorff,  was  removed  from  the  command.  How¬ 
ever,  the  new  general,  Wallis,  brought  no  change  of  fortune. 
Instructed  to  fight  a  decisive  battle,  he  did  so  at  Crozka,  near 
Belgrade  (July  23rd),  with  singular  ill  success,  for  his  bad 
choice  of  ground  more  than  nullified  the  good  behaviour 
of  the  troops,  with  the  result  that  after  losing  20,000  men, 
he  had  to  leave  Belgrade  to  its  fate  and  retire  on  Pancsova. 
All  he  could  do  was  to  begin  negotiations  with  the  Turks 
which  his  successor,  Neipperg,  completed.  The  Peace  of 
Belgrade  (signed  Sept.  1  8th,  1739)  was  a  sad  contrast  to  Pas- 
sarowitz  and  Carlowitz.  Once  again  Western  Wallachia  and 
Servia,  including  Belgrade,  passed  under  Turkish  rule,  and  the 
boundary  of  Bosnia  was  restored  to  its  position  in  1699,  the 
Danube  and  the  Save  forming  the  frontier.  Thus  Austria, 
which  had  embarked  on  the  war  in  the  hope  that  she  might 
make  gains  to  set  off  against  her  Italian  losses,  found  herself 
involved  in  even  greater  humiliation.  The  war  was  in  every 
way  a  failure.  Its  cost  was  great  in  men  and  in  money  alike. 
The  reputation  of  the  Austrian  army  received  a  severe  blow  ; 
its  unpreparedness,  indiscipline  and  inefficiency  were  displayed 


104  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1740 


to  all  the  world,  its  most  reputed  and  trusted  generals  were  found 
wanting.  Wallis  and  Neipperg  shared  the  fate  of  Secken- 
dorff ;  they  were  court-martialed  both  for  their  conduct  of  the 
military  operations  and  still  more  for  their  precipitation  in 
concluding  peace.  But  such  treatment  was  a  little  unfair  to 
the  generals,  the  fault  lay  rather  with  the  government  as  a 
whole,  and  with  the  unsound  condition  of  the  Hapsburg 
dominions  at  that  moment.  Painstaking,  anxious  to  do  good, 
capable  of  seeing  what  it  would  be  well  to  do,  but  quite 
incapable  of  the  moral  courage  and  hard  work  needed  to  carry 
the  task  through,  Charles  VI  was  persistently  unfortunate 
throughout  his  reign,  and  in  nothing  so  much  as  in  its  abrupt 
end.  His  death  (Oct.  20th,  1740)  was  by  no  means  ex¬ 
pected.  Only  fifty-six  years  old,  he  might  well  have  lived 
another  fifteen  or  even  twenty  years ;  and  it  was  confidently 
expected  that  he  would  survive  his  wife,  Elizabeth  Christina 
of  Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel,  who  was  very  ill,  in  which  case 
a  second  marriage  might  have  produced  the  male  heir  of 
whom  the  Hapsburg  dynasty  stood  in  such  great  need.1  He 
had,  it  is  true,  obtained  the  assent  of  nearly  all  the  Powers 
to  the  Pragmatic  Sanction,  though  Bavaria  and  the  Elector 
Palatine  had  withdrawn  that  given  in  1726;  but,  as  Eugene 
had  warned  him,  paper  promises  were  to  prove  of  far  less 
value  than  a  full  treasury  and  an  efficient  army.  He  had 
also  apparently  solved  the  question  of  Jtilich  and  Berg  in  favour 
of  the  Sulzbachs  by  a  secret  treaty  with  France  in  January 
17 39  ;  but  Fleury,  feeling  that  the  cards  were  in  his  hands,  was 
just  about  to  make  a  somewhat  similar  compact  with  Prussia.2 
No  moment  could  have  been  more  unfortunate  than  that  at 
which  Charles  VI  actually  died.  Austria  was  of  all  countries 
the  least  fitted  for  the  troubles  of  a  disputed  succession  ;  above 
all  things  she  needed  ten  years  of  rest  and  recuperation,  while, 
little  though  it  was  anticipated,  the  death  of  Frederick  William 
of  Prussia  (May  31st,  1740)  was  destined  to  be  of  enormous 
importance  to  her.  It  was  early  in  October  when  Charles  was 
taken  ill  at  his  hunting-box  at  Schonborn  and  died  in  a  few 
days,  leaving  to  his  successor  a  sea  of  troubles  for  many  of 
which  it  is  difficult  not  to  hold  him  responsible. 

1  It  was  probably  for  some  such  reason  as  this  that  he  neglected  to  secure  the 
election  of  Francis  Stephen  of  Lorraine  as  King  of  the  Romans. 

2  Cf.  p.  96. 


CHAPTER  VII 


MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  ENEMIES 

IT  was  not  merely  the  special  circumstances  of  the  moment 
at  which  Charles  VI  died,  not  merely  the  fact  that  his 
heir  and  successor  was  a  young  and  inexperienced  woman, 
which  made  the  Hapsburg  dominions  in  1740  so  tempting  a 
prey  to  the  would-be  spoilers  :  the  constitution  of  the  disunited 
and  incoherent  realm  and  the  relations  between  its  different 
parts  seemed  to  promise  an  easy  success  to  the  grasping 
claimants  who  were  proposing  to  divide  them.  The  accumula¬ 
tion  of  territories  to  which  Maria  Theresa  succeeded  was  not 
a  nation,  it  was  not  even  organised  as  a  federation.  Under 
Charles  VI  little  had  been  done  towards  binding  together  by 
administrative  or  judicial  reforms  the  three  main  groups,  the 
Austrian,  the  Bohemian  and  the  Hungarian,  which  still  remained 
in  all  essentials  separate,  while  the  outlying  dependencies,  in 
the  Netherlands  and  Italy,  tended  rather  to  absorb  the  attention 
of  their  rulers  and  draw  them  away  from  the  task,  difficult 
enough  already,  of  welding  together  the  central  dominions. 
The  constitutional  and  administrative  arrangements  had  under¬ 
gone  few  changes  since  1715.  To  a  certain  extent  the 
Imperial  authority  had  gained  ground  at  the  expense  of  local 
officials,  but  the  progress  of  centralisation  had  been  slow.  The 
recognition  of  the  Pragmatic  Sanction,  however,  had  done 
something  to  bind  the  provinces  together ;  it  had  established  a 
common  principle  of  succession  accepted  and  acknowledged  all 
through  the  Hapsburg  dominions,  and  though  Charles  VI  had 
shrunk  from  attempting  to  push  the  process,  further  signs 
were  not  altogether  wanting  of  a  tendency  towards  the  work 
Maria  Theresa  was  to  accomplish  when  she  fused  the  separate 
Bohemian  and  Austrian  Chancelleries  and  brought  all  the 
German  dominions  of  the  Hapsburgs  under  the  same  judicial 
and  administrative  system.  But  in  1740  these  changes  were 
still  to  come,  and  at  that  time,  as  far  as  constitution  went,  Austria 


i o6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1740 


might  still  be  said  to  have  barely  emerged  from  the  Middle 
Ages ;  her  government  was  still  largely  feudal  in  character,  and 
in  efficiency  and  organisation  was  far  behind  the  other  countries 
of  Western  Europe.1 

In  each  province  of  the  Hapsburg  dominions  the  old 
constitutional  forms  lingered  on,  retaining  enough  vitality  to 
hamper  and  impede  the  action  of  the  central  government,  to 
diminish  its  authority  and  its  control  over  the  resources  of  the 
state,  but  devoid  of  the  compensating  advantages  which  might 
have  been  derived  from  a  system  of  real  and  adequate  repre¬ 
sentative  government,  since  they  had  their  roots  in  feudal 
privileges  rather  than  in  real  and  active  constitutional  life  and 
liberties.  In  these  assemblies  ( Landtage )  the  power  lay  with 
the  nobles ;  for  while  the  burghers  had  few  votes  and  less 
influence,  it  was  only  in  the  Tyrol  that  the  peasantry  were 
represented  at  all.  And  at  this  period,  as  they  were  soon  to 
show,  the  Austrian  nobility  were  sadly  lacking  in  patriotism, 
in  public  spirit  and  in  self-sacrifice.  Charles  VI  had  made 
great  efforts  to  attach  them  to  the  Hapsburg  dynasty,  but  his 
over-anxiety  had  defeated  its  own  ends.  Unduly  lavish  con¬ 
cessions  and  favours  had  only  whetted  their  appetites  and 
made  them  ask  for  more.  Selfish  and  parochial,  they  looked 
to  their  own  personal  ends,  or  at  the  utmost  to  the  interests  of 
their  provinces,  rather  than  to  those  of  the  dynasty  and  the 
state.  Still  they  were  not  merely  an  idle  privileged  caste,  as 
was  the  case  in  France.  If  they  enjoyed  the  benefits  of  their 
feudal  position,  they  discharged  its  duties,  officering  the 
Army  and  controlling  local  government.  Neither  burghers  nor 
peasantry  were  of  much  account.  The  cities  differed  in 
constitutions,  in  rights  and  privileges,  and  utterly  lacked  com¬ 
bination,  either  political  or  industrial.  Those  which  stood  on 
the  lands  of  nobles  paid  them  dues  and  performed  services  just 
as  the  peasants  did.  Inside  the  towns  the  power  was  usually 
in  the  hands  of  a  narrow  oligarchy,  often  a  guild  which  had 
become  obsolete  and  inefficient.  Charles  VI  had  made  some 
praiseworthy  efforts  to  sweep  away  the  cramping  relics  of  these 
mediaeval  institutions,  but  he  had  not  had  much  success,  and 
trade  and  industry  were  still  subject  to  their  blighting  influence. 
To  this  must  be  attributed  the  comparative  failure  of  the 
public  works,  of  the  encouragement  to  commerce,  and  of  the 

1  Cf.  Chapter  II.  pp.  35-36. 


i74o]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  ENEMIES 


107 


other  efforts  which  Charles  VI  made  to  promote  the  material 
prosperity  of  his  subjects.  In  the  German  districts  there  was 
no  serfdom,  but  in  Bohemia  the  peasants  were  still  unfree,  the 
chattels  of  their  lords  ;  and  that  all  was  not  well  with  them 
may  be  judged  from  the  agrarian  revolts  which  had  broken 
out  in  Bohemia  in  1680,  in  Moravia  as  late  as  1717.  A  great 
part  of  the  land  was  in  the  hands  of  the  clergy,  who  were 
numerous  and  powerful,  and  not  by  any  means  a  factor  to¬ 
wards  progress.  Though  somewhat  on  the  wane,  the  influence 
of  the  Jesuits  was  still  considerable  enough  to  be  deleterious. 
The  state  of  the  judicial  organisation  and  administration 
urgently  required  reform,  while  even  more  complete  chaos 
prevailed  in  the  finances.  The  Court  was  wasteful,  the  taxes 
were  at  once  oppressive  and  unproductive,  the  revenue,  which 
stood  at  about  30  million  thalers,  was  quite  insufficient  for  the 
Army  and  the  administration.  All  Charles  Vi’s  efforts  to 
reform  the  finances  had  broken  down,  and  the  two  recent  and 
most  disastrous  wars  seemed  to  have  utterly  exhausted  the 
resources  of  the  country.  The  Treasury  was  practically 
empty,  and  the  heaviness  of  the  taxation  had  made  the  people 
discontented  and  disaffected.  Nowhere  were  the  effects  of  the 
financial  disorders  and  constitutional  chaos  more  pernicious 
than  in  their  influence  on  the  condition  of  the  Army.  In 
the  first  place,  it  suffered  from  the  division  of  control  between 
the  War  Council,  which  attended  to  the  levying  of  the  troops, 
and  the  local  Estates,  which  provided  the  funds  for  their 
maintenance.  A  certain  amount  had  been  done  of  late  years 
to  improve  the  Army,  but  its  organisation  left  an  enormous 
amount  to  be  desired.  Facilities  for  training  the  officers  and 
exercising  the  troops  were  lacking,  and  its  whole  tone  and 
prestige  were  suffering  from  the  disastrous  Turkish  war. 
Nominally  fairly  strong — the  establishment  for  17  34  was 
fixed  at  150,000 — the  actual  numbers  bore  little  resemblance 
to  the  paper  strength ;  and  of  the  60,000  men  to  which  the 
Army  actually  amounted  on  a  peace  footing,  the  majority  were 
in  Hungary,  Lombardy,  or  the  Netherlands,  and  only  very  few 
were  to  be  found  in  the  central  provinces. 

Nor  had  Maria  Theresa  much  better  cause  for  satisfaction 
and  confidence  in  the  advisers  on  whom  she  had  to  rely.  1  he 
Turkish  war  had  left  all  her  most  famous  generals  under  a 
cloud,  and  not  one  of  the  ministers  who  composed  the  “  Con- 


ioS  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1740 


ference  ”  could  be  described  as  a  pillar  of  strength.  With 
hardly  any  exceptions  they  were  over  seventy  years  of  age, 
and  though  they  had  once  done  good  service,  that  day  was 
past.  Age  had  brought  irresolution  ;  prejudices,  timidity  and 
indolence  had  warped  their  judgment  and  diminished  their 
powers ;  the  work  was  too  much  for  them  physically  as  well 
as  morally.  The  Chancellor,  Philip  Louis  Sinzendorff,  was 
worn  out,  and  quite  unfit  for  his  post ;  Alois  Harrach,  the 
Land  Marshal  of  Lower  Austria,  lacked  vigour  and  capacity ; 
his  brother  Joseph,  who  was  President  of  the  War  Council 
from  Konigsegg’s  fall  in  1738  till  1764,  was  younger  than 
the  rest  of  the  Conference,  but  not  much  more  efficient,  being 
indolent  and  slow.  Philip  Kinsky,  the  Chancellor  of  Bohemia, 
was  dominated  by  local  and  particularist  ideas ;  he  was  devoid 
of  any  wider  patriotism,  and  his  sole  object  seems  to  have 
been  to  assist  Bohemia  to  avoid  bearing  her  proper  burdens. 
The  Finance  Minister,  Gundacker  Stahremberg,  was  perhaps 
the  most  capable  member  of  the  Conference ;  he  came  of  a 
family  eminent  for  its  good  services,  and  his  own  record  was 
honourable  ;  but  he  was  feeling  the  weight  of  his  years,  and  he 
was  hardly  fitted  to  cope  with  such  a  crisis  as  that  of  1740. 
Under  these  circumstances  it  was  not  unnatural  that  the 
Secretary  to  the  Conference,  Bartenstein  (1689— 1757),  an 
energetic,  rather  opinionated  man  of  considerable  capacity  in 
some  respects,  but  quite  devoid  of  the  higher  qualities  of  a 
statesman,  should  have  enjoyed  a  rather  greater  share  of 
Maria  Theresa’s  confidence  in  the  early  days  of  her  reign  than 
he  did  later  on,  when  experience  enabled  her  to  judge  more 
for  herself,  both  of  men  and  of  policies. 

That  at  this  particular  crisis  Bartenstein’s  judgment  was 
much  at  fault  cannot  be  denied.  He  relied  blindly  on  the 
gcod  intentions  of  France,  not  seeing  that  the  concessions 
Charles  VI  had  made  in  the  hope  of  securing  Fleury’s  good 
offices  had  only  brought  the  weakness  and  helplessness  of 
Austria  before  the  notice  of  her  enemies. 

And  when  Maria  Theresa  looked  round  upon  the  Powers 
of  Europe,  it  must  have  been  as  probable  enemies  rather  than 
possible  allies  that  the  majority  of  them  appeared  to  her. 
True  that  they  had  almost  all  guaranteed  the  Pragmatic 
Sanction,1  but  faithful  observance  of  the  most  solemn  treaty 

1  For  list,  see  Erdmannsdorffer,  bk.  vii.  ch.  5,  and  cf.  p.  83. 


1 74°]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  ENEMIES 


109 


engagements  was  hardly  a  characteristic  feature  of  European 
statesmen  in  the  eighteenth  century.1  Most  of  the  Powers 
did  return  favourable  replies  to  the  circular  which  Maria 
Theresa  addressed  to  them  on  her  accession,  announcing 
that  she  had  succeeded  under  the  terms  of  the  Pragmatic 
Sanction,  and  claiming  the  fulfilment  of  their  promises  ;  but 
these  replies  also  were  mere  paper  securities  of  which  the 
worthlessness  was  soon  to  be  proved. 

Of  the  claims  which  Maria  Theresa  had  to  fear,  those  of 
Bavaria  and  Saxony  were  undoubtedly  the  strongest.  The 
Elector  of  Bavaria  and  the  King  of  Saxony  were  in  the  first 
place  the  husbands  of  those  daughters  of  the  Emperor  Joseph  I 
who  had  been  deprived  of  the  succession  to  the  Hapsburg 
dominions  in  favour  of  Maria  Theresa.2  Charles  Albert  of 
Bavaria  had,  moreover,  a  claim  on  his  own  behalf  as  a  descend¬ 
ant  of  Anne,  daughter  of  Ferdinand  I  of  Austria.  By  the  will 
of  that  Emperor,  in  case  the  descendants  of  his  sons  (Maxi¬ 
milian  II  and  Charles  of  Styria)  failed,  those  of  Anne  were 
to  succeed.  According  to  the  Bavarian  contention,  Anne’s 
heirs  were  to  come  in  on  the  failure  of  the  male  line ;  but 
as  the  Austrians  contended,  and  as  was  proved  by  the  pro¬ 
duction  of  the  authentic  will  from  the  archives  at  Vienna,  it 
was  on  the  failure  of  “  legitimate  ”  heirs  that  the  contingency 
was  to  arise.3  Still  Charles  Albert  did  not  hesitate  to  claim 
the  succession  directly  Charles  VI  died  ;  and  though  his  own 
resources  were  not  sufficient  to  make  him  formidable,  in  the 
Polish  Succession  War  the  old  relations  between  France  and 
Bavaria  had  to  some  extent  been  renewed,4  so  that  it  was 
the  support  of  France  rather  than  the  strength  of  Bavaria 
which  made  the  Wittelsbach  claim  a  danger.  Moreover,  there 
was  in  the  Austrian  dominions  a  faction  which  was  decidedly 
favourable  to  the  Bavarian  claim,  the  party  that  had  objected 
to  the  marriage  of  Maria  Theresa  to  Francis  Stephen  of 
Lorraine ;  and  this  disaffection  largely  accounted  for  the  feeble 
resistance  of  Upper  Austria  to  the  invaders  in  1741,  and  for 
the  discreditable  readiness  with  which  many  of  the  nobles  and 
officials  of  that  province  and  of  Bohemia  submitted  to  the 
Bavarian  and  accepted  office  under  him. 

1  Cf.  Sorel,  Europe  et  la  Revolution  Eranfaise,  i.  24.  2  Cf.  pp.  7 S— 7 9* 

3  Cf.  von  Arneth,  Maria  Theresa ,  vol.  i.  p.  97»  and  Wolf’s  Austria,  bk.  i.  ch.  I. 

4  Cf.  p.  100;  also  Instructions  aux  Ambassadeurs  de  France — Baviere. 


no  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1740 


Augustus  of  Saxony-Poland  ought,  if  gratitude  had  any 
influence  over  his  policy,  to  have  supported  Austria,  to  whom 
he  mainly  owed  his  Polish  crown.  He  did  at  first  recognise  the 
Pragmatic  Sanction,1  and  place  himself  on  Austria’s  side  ;  but 
before  long  the  successes  of  MariaTheresa’s  enemies, the  influence 
of  Marshal  Belleisle  and  of  Montijo,  the  Spanish  Ambassador 
at  Dresden,  and  the  rejection  of  the  concessions  he  demanded 
as  the  price  of  his  support,2  caused  Augustus  to  drift  over  to  the 
other  side  and  finally  to  participate  in  the  attack  on  Bohemia. 

Spain  and  Sardinia  also  made  more  or  less  formal  claims 
on  the  Hapsburg  territories,  but  their  claims  were  of  that  class 
which  would  be  amply  met  by  a  dividend  of  a  shilling  in 
the  pound,  and  with  a  maritime  war  against  England  already 
engaging  her  resources,  Spain  would  hardly  have  done  any¬ 
thing  unless  France  gave  her  a  definite  lead.  And  France 
procrastinated  over  her  reply,  making  excuses  of  a  formal 
nature,  and  waiting  to  see  what  was  going  to  happen  in  the 
hope  that  she  might  direct  events  to  her  own  advantage. 

England,  the  United  Provinces  and  Russia  were  thus  about 
the  only  Powers  from  whom  Maria  Theresa  had  nothing  to 
fear  ;  but  unfortunately  for  her  the  course  of  affairs  in  Russia 
following  on  the  death  of  the  Empress  Anne  Ivanovna 
(Oct.  28th,  1740)  resulted  in  the  temporary  supremacy  of 
Munich  and  Ostermann,  who  were  hostile  to  Austria,  and  thus 
deprived  Maria  Theresa  of  the  assistance  from  that  quarter 
which  she  might  have  hoped. 

It  seemed,  therefore,  that  all  depended  on  the  action  of 
France.  Fleury  is  generally  credited  with  a  wish  to  preserve 
the  peace  of  Europe,  and  is  held  to  have  been  forced  into  a 
war  he  disliked  by  the  importunities  of  a  younger  and  more 
enterprising  generation,  just  as  Walpole  was  driven  into  the 
Spanish  war.  It  would  appear,  however,  that  the  acquisition  of 
Lorraine  by  France  under  his  auspices  had  whetted  his  appetite 
for  further  territorial  gains,  and  that  if  he  resisted  Belleisle’s 
proposals  that  France  should  seize  this  splendid  opportunity 
of  partitioning  the  Hapsburg  dominions  and  so  completing 


1  Von  Arneth,  i.  ioi. 

2  Namely,  a  strip  of  territory  in  Silesia  giving  military  communication  between 
Saxony  and  Poland,  the  royal  title  for  Saxony,  i.e.  a  kingdom  within  the  Empire, 
together  with  those  portions  of  Lower  Lusatia  which  Prussia  held  as  fiefs  of  the 
Bohemian  Crown.  Cf.  von  Arneth,  i.  207. 


1740]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  ENEMIES 


hi 


the  work  of  Mazarin  and  Louis  XIV,  it  was  rather  from  jealousy 
of  the  proposer  than  from  dislike  of  the  proposal,  and  also 
because  France  seemed  at  the  moment  on  the  verge  of  being 
involved  in  the  Anglo-Spanish  war.  He  had  told  the  Elector 
of  Bavaria  that  the  French  guarantee  of  the  Pragmatic  Sanction 
would  not  be  observed  if  any  third  party  should  prove  to  have  a 
better  right  to  the  Hapsburg  dominions  than  Maria  Theresa  had; 
and,  in  the  words  of  a  contemporary,1  to  say  that  “  the  Queen  of 
Hungary  has  a  right  to  her  possessions  not  in  prejudice  to  the 
rights  of  others  ...  is  a  door  to  evade  the  whole  obligation.” 

But  it  was  by  might,  not  by  right,  that  the  question  was  to 
be  decided.  While  every  one  was  watching  France,  the  blow 
fell  from  a  very  different  quarter.  The  young  monarch  who 
had  ascended  the  Prussian  throne  on  the  death  of  Frederick 
William  I  a  few  months  earlier  was  burning  for  an  opportunity 
to  make  a  name  for  himself.  He  would  have  no  more  of  the 
cautious  policy  of  neutrality  and  inaction  which  had  made  men 
sneer  at  the  military  monarch  who  never  let  his  parade-ground 
soldiers  fire  a  shot  in  real  earnest.  He  was,  moreover,  a  true 
Hohenzollern  in  his  desire  for  territorial  gains,  and  in  his 
determination  to  seek  them  along  the  line  of  least  resistance. 
Energetic,  ambitious,  anxious  to  use  the  fine  weapon  his  father 
had  left  him  and  which  he  had  at  the  very  outset  begun  to 
increase,  adding  no  less  than  16,000  men  at  once,  he  had 
already  given  proof  of  his  aggressive  and  imperious  character 
by  his  action  in  the  Herstal  affair.  Herstal  was  one  of  those 
fragments  of  the  Orange  inheritance  which  had  finally  been 
adjudged  to  Frederick  William  I  when  the  quarrel  between  him 
and  Louis  XV  over  that  point  was  compromised  in  1732. 
The  Bishop  of  Liege  also  laid  claim  to  it,  and  had  tried  to 
prevent  the  Prussian  recruiters  enlisting  men  there.  Frederick 
William,  when  no  friendly  settlement  could  be  arranged,  had  let 
the  matter  alone.  Frederick  II  at  once  took  forcible  action, 
marched  troops  into  the  district,  exacted  a  contribution  and 
compelled  the  inhabitants  to  support  the  force  in  occupation, 
disregarding  absolutely  the  Emperor’s  orders  to  him  to  retire 
from  the  territory.  It  was  a  minor  matter,  but  it  was  typical. 
Regardless  of  forms  or  rights,  Frederick  II  used  force  unspar¬ 
ingly  to  gain  his  ends,  and  paid  heed  to  no  commands  that  had 
not  force  at  their  back. 

1  Robert  Trevor  to  H.  Walpole,  Trevor  MSS.,  Hist.  MSS.  Com.  p.  66. 


1 12  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1740 


Such  a  monarch  was  not  likely  to  let  slip  the  promising 
opportunity  which  the  state  of  the  Austrian  dominions  at 
Charles  Vi’s  death  laid  before  him.  Nor  was  it  hard  to  find 
precedents  for  aggression.  Included  in  the  Austrian  province 
of  Silesia  were  the  Duchies  of  Liegnitz,  Wohlau  and  Brieg, 
which  had  passed  into  the  direct  rule  of  the  Hapsburgs  on  the 
death  in  1675  of  George  William,  last  Duke  of  Liegnitz.  In 
that  year  the  Great  Elector  had  advanced  a  claim  to  these 
Duchies  on  the  strength  of  an  Erbverbriiderung  or  “  heritage 
fraternity”  entered  into  in  1537  by  the  then  Elector  of 
Brandenburg,  Joachim  II,  and  Duke  Frederick  of  Liegnitz. 
However,  not  only  had  the  arrangement  never  received  the 
sanction  of  the  Emperor,  whose  rights  it  undoubtedly  infringed, 
but  Charles  V  had  protested  against  it  at  the  time  ;  while  in  1546 
Ferdinand  I,  interfering  as  King  of  Bohemia  and  immediate 
overlord  of  Liegnitz,  compelled  the  Duke  to  cancel  the  treaty. 
That  technically  Brandenburg  had  any  case  at  all  is  difficult  to 
believe,1  though  the  Hohenzollern  seem  to  have  acted  on  the 
principle  that  a  claim  acquires  validity  from  mere  frequency  of 
assertion.  It  was  partly  because  the  Emperor  had  taken  posses¬ 
sion  of  the  Liegnitz  inheritance  in  1675,  as  being  fiefs  which 
naturally  lapsed  to  their  overlord  on  failure  of  heirs,  and  had 
flatly  refused  Frederick  William  any  compensation,  that  the 
Great  Elector  had  concluded  in  October  1679  a  treaty 
which  enrolled  Brandenburg  among  the  clients  of  France — a 
curious  proceeding  for  a  prince  in  whom  some  later  historians 
have  endeavoured  to  discover  a  champion  of  Germany  against 
French  aggression.  In  1686  the  matter  had  gone  a  stage 
further.  Alarmed  by  the  strongly  anti-Protestant  attitude  of 
Louis  XIV,  and  perhaps  made  uneasy  by  the  Truce  of  Ratisbon 
(1684),  which  confirmed  Louis  in  the  possession  of  Strassburg, 
for  which  he  must  have  felt  himself  in  no  small  measure 
responsible,  Frederick  William  began  to  seek  opportunities  of 
drawing  nearer  to  Austria,  offering  his  aid  against  the  Turks 
and  eventually  against  France — on  conditions.  These  condi¬ 
tions,  however,  were  more  than  the  Emperor  and  most  of  his 
advisers  were  disposed  to  grant,  for  Frederick  William  suited 
his  demands  to  the  measure  of  the  necessity  of  Austria. 
Ultimately,  after  much  haggling,  a  treaty  was  signed  in  March 
1686,  by  which  in  return  for  considerable  subsidies  and  the 

1  Cf.  von  Arneth,  Maria  Theresa,  i.  105. 


1740]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  ENEMIES 


Ii3 

cession  of  the  little  district  of  Schwiebus  and  a  guarantee  of  the 
Lichtenstein  claim  on  East  Friesland,  which  had  now  passed  to 
the  Hohenzollern,  the  Great  Elector  despatched  8000  men  to 
the  seat  of  war  in  Hungary  and  abandoned  all  further  claims 
on  the  Silesian  Duchies. 

But  unfortunately  this  was  not  the  end  of  the  Silesian 
question.  At  the  same  time  that  this  negotiation  was  con¬ 
cluded,  the  Emperor’s  envoy,  Baron  Fridag,  concluded  a  secret 
treaty  with  the  Electoral  Prince,  who  pledged  himself  to  restore 
Schwiebus  to  the  Emperor  on  succeeding  to  the  Electorate.  The 
facts  with  regard  to  this  negotiation  are  disputed,  and  the  truth 
is  not  clear.  The  account  given  on  the  Prussian  side1  is  that  the 
Austrians  represented  to  the  Electoral  Prince,  who  was  one  of  the 
leaders  of  the  anti-French  party  in  Brandenburg,  that  the  French 
party  at  the  Court  were  insisting  on  the  cession  of  Schwiebus 
to  prevent  an  understanding  between  Austria  and  Brandenburg. 
The  Austrian  account,  on  the  other  hand,  represents  the  proposal 
to  surrender  Schwiebus  as  coming  from  Frederick,  who  hoped 
thereby  to  secure  the  Emperor’s  good  offices  in  the  matter  ol  his 
father’s  will.  The  Great  Elector  was  at  this  time  much  under  the 
influence  of  his  second  wife,  Dorothea  of  Holstein-Gliicksburg, 
who  had  induced  him  to  bequeath  to  the  four  sons  she  had 
borne  him,  separate  territorial  appanages  out  of  the  lands  he 
had  acquired.  Thus  Minden  was  to  go  to  Prince  Philip 
William,  Halberstadt  and  Reinstein  to  provide  a  territorial 
establishment  for  his  brother  Albert  Frederick.  That  such  an 
arrangement  would  have  tended  to  weaken  the  power  of  the 
family  seems  certain,  for  there  is  little  reason  to  suppose  that 
its  results  would  have  differed  from  those  which  followed  in 
Saxony  from  the  very  similar  dispositions  made  by  John 
George  I.2  Carefully  as  the  Great  Elector  sought  to  reserve 
for  his  successor  as  Elector  military  and  diplomatic  control 
over  the  territories  of  the  cadet-branches,  even  their  partial 
independence  must  have  proved  a  fatal  obstacle  to  the  com¬ 
pleteness  of  King  Frederick  William  I’s  administrative  reforms. 
Under  the  terms  of  the  will,  the  Emperor  was  appointed 
executor,  and  had  he  chosen  to  support  the  claims  of  the 
younger  sons  of  the  Great  Elector,  Frederick  I  might  have  found 
them  difficult  to  resist.  Thus,  when  the  death  of  Frederick 

1  Cf.  Droysen,  Geschichte  der  Preussischen  Politick ,  Part  iv.  vol.  4,  pp.  i54-204' 

2  Cf.  pp.  39-40. 

8 


1 14  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1740 


William  brought  the  question  forward,  the  surrender  of 
Schwiebus  was  the  price  for  the  Emperor’s  consent  to  the 
setting  aside  of  the  will.  On  making  the  restoration,  Frederick 
declared  that  he  resumed  his  claims  on  the  Silesian  Duchies; 
somewhat  unjustifiably,  for  if  it  happened  that  the  district 
received  by  Frederick  William  as  compensation  for  the  aban¬ 
doned  claim  coincided  with  the  price  paid  by  his  successor 
for  the  very  definite  service  of  quashing  the  Great  Elector’s 
will,  one  may  fairly  regard  that  service  as  the  real  compensa¬ 
tion  for  the  none  too  strong  claim,  a  fairly  ample  quid  pro 
quo.  Subsequent  events,  then,  make  it  appear  more  probable 
that  of  the  two  versions  the  Austrian  is  nearer  the  truth.1 

That  the  surrender  of  Schwiebus  does  not  affect  the 
Prussian  claim  on  the  Duchies  may  therefore  be  admitted,  and 
at  the  same  time  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  the  resumption  of 
the  claim  by  Frederick  I  cannot  be  regarded  as  in  the  least 
making  up  for  its  original  invalidity.  The  claim  on  Jaegerndorf 
was  hardly  any  stronger  when  put  to  the  test  of  facts.  This 
Duchy  had  once  been  in  the  possession  of  John  George  of 
Brandenburg,  second  son  of  the  Elector  Joachim  Frederick 
(1  598— 1 608),  though  the  Hohenzollern  title  to  it  had  never 
received  Imperial  recognition.  In  1622,  John  George  of 
Jaegerndorf  was  put  to  the  ban  of  the  Empire  for  assisting 
Frederick  V  of  the  Palatinate  in  his  attempt  to  deprive  the 
Hapsburgs  of  Bohemia.  The  Duchy  was  accordingly  forfeited 
with  all  due  formalities  and  annexed  by  Ferdinand  II,  and  had 
remained  in  Hapsburg  hands  at  the  Peace  of  1648.  Thus 
according  to  the  laws  and  customs  of  the  Empire  the  Hohen¬ 
zollern  title  to  Jaegerndorf  was  valueless,  and  indeed  the  only 
right  which  Frederick  II  possessed  over  Silesia  was  the  right  of 
the  stronger. 

When  it  is  further  remembered  that  in  1728  Prussia  had 
formally  guaranteed  the  Pragmatic  Sanction,  that  Frederick  II 
himself  admitted  that  in  his  place  Frederick  William  would 
have  kept  his  word,  the  only  thing  that  is  surprising  is  that 
Frederick  should  ever  have  taken  the  trouble  to  produce  any 
so-called  “justification”  for  his  action  ;  but  it  certainly  is  not  a 
little  striking  to  reflect  that  but  for  Charles  VI  there  would 
have  been  no  Frederick  II  in  existence  in  1740.  It  was 
largely  the  Emperor’s  intervention,  ill-timed  indeed  in  the 

1  Cf.  Z.S.  ii.  21. 


i74o]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  ENEMIES 


US 

interests  of  his  family,  which  had  caused  the  irate  Frederick 
William  to  refrain  from  executing  the  sentence  of  death 
pronounced  against  the  then  Crown  Prince  for  his  attempted 
desertion  (1730).  The  return  which  Frederick  11  now  made 
gives  one  some  idea  of  the  standards  of  international  morality, 
public  faith  and  private  gratitude  upon  which  he  acted. 

As  a  justification  for  the  seizure  of  Silesia,  it  has  been 
urged  that  if  Prussia  was  to  keep  her  position  in  Europe  she 
must  have  more  territory  and  population  to  support  her  dis¬ 
proportionate  army,  and  that  therefore  she  had  to  make  what 
acquisitions  she  could  ; 1  an  argument  whose  barefaced  appeal 
to  force  is  fully  in  keeping  with  the  high-handed  Prussian  tra¬ 
ditions,  but  which  is  not  worth  serious  consideration.  That 
Prussia  had  been  ill-treated  by  Austria  in  the  matter  of  Jiilich 
and  Berg  2  is  undeniable,  but  that  hardly  gave  Frederick  a  valid 
claim  on  Silesia ;  though  if  he  had  chosen  to  forcibly  assert  his 
claim  to  Jiilich  and  Berg,  and  had  marched  troops  into  them  in 
order  to  obtain  security  that  they  would  fall  to  him  on  the 
death  of  their  holder,  his  action  would  not  have  been  liable  to 
the  censure  which  one  cannot  but  pass  on  his  utterly  unjustifi¬ 
able  seizure  of  Silesia.  But  the  truth  was  that  he  was  afraid  of 
France — afraid  that  if  he  were  to  seize  Jiilich  and  Berg,  Fleury 
might  adopt  the  cause  of  the  Catholic  Sulzbachs  and  dis¬ 
possess  him,  afraid  that  France  might  not  like  his  presence  at 
so  important  a  point  on  the  Rhine.  Moreover,  Silesia  was 
richer,  larger,  more  populous,  more  conveniently  situated  with 
regard  to  Brandenburg,  and  the  easier  prey.  Frederick  knew 
that  he  was  not  the  only  vulture  gathered  round  the  carcase  of 
the  apparently  moribund  Hapsburg  monarchy ;  he  knew  that 
there  were  others  as  greedy  as  himself,  and  that  he  could  rely 
on  being  imitated  and  probably  supported,  that  Maria  Theresa 
was  beset  by  possible  enemies,  that  France  would  probably 
view  with  approbation  the  humiliation  of  the  Power  which  had 
struggled  so  hard  to  defend  Germany  against  her,  and  he 
preferred  plundering  a  woman  in  distress  to  incurring  the 
displeasure  of  the  Bourbon  monarchy.  The  pretext  that 
Maria  Theresa  was  threatened  with  an  attack  from  Saxony — 
which  had  recognised  its  guarantee — and  from  Bavaria — which 
could  not  dispose  of  more  than  20  to  30,000  men — was  the 
merest  subterfuge :  even  had  it  been  true  it  would  hardly 
1  Cf.  E.H.R.  1889,  p.  586.  2  Cf.  p.  95- 


ii 6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1740 


have  justified  a  Power  on  friendly  terms  with  its  neighbour 
in  taking  forcible  and  uninvited  possession  of  one  of  that 
neighbour’s  provinces  because  it  has  selected  it  as  the  reward 
for  services  not  yet  rendered.  But  there  was  about  as  much 
truth  in  the  assertion  as  there  was  in  the  proclamation  which 
Frederick  published  when  he  crossed  the  frontier,  declaring  that 
the  step  was  taken  in  concert  with  Maria  Theresa,  with  whom 
he  was  negotiating. 

The  invasion  of  Silesia  was  as  successful  as  it  was 
unexpected.  The  province  was  all  but  without  a  garrison  ; 
and  even  had  it  been  at  its  full  peace  establishment  of 
13,000  men,  that  force  would  have  been  outnumbered  by 
two  to  one  by  the  5000  cavalry  and  22,000  infantry  of  whom 
Frederick  took  command  at  Crossen  on  December  14th,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  10,000  more  troops  who  were  a  few  days’  march 
in  rear.  All  that  the  Governor  of  the  province,  Count  Wallis, 
could  do  was  to  throw  the  few  troops  he  had  into  the  fortresses 
of  Brieg,  Glogau  and  Neisse,  which  were  hastily  prepared  for 
defence.  Breslau,  the  capital  of  the  province,  refused  to 
admit  a  garrison,  and  declared  that  it  would  be  responsible 
for  its  own  defence.  Luckily  for  the  Austrians,  bad  weather 
delayed  the  Prussian  movements,  and  Frederick,  as  yet 
unaware  of  the  value  of  promptitude,  wasted  six  valuable  days 
in  an  unnecessary  delay  at  Herrendorf,  five  miles  from  Glogau 
(Dec.  22nd  to  28th).  This  gave  time  for  Brieg  and  Neisse 
to  be  put  into  such  a  condition  that  they  could  stand  a 
siege.  On  December  28th  the  King’s  column  resumed  its 
march  up  the  Oder  on  Breslau,  leaving  part  of  the  reserve 
division  to  blockade  Glogau,  while  Schwerin  and  the  right  wing, 
who  had  moved  parallel  up  the  Bober,  occupied  Liegnitz. 
The  people  of  Breslau  behaved  with  a  culpable  lack  of 
patriotism  and  courage,  tamely  opening  their  gates  on  January 
2nd  on  condition  that  they  should  not  be  forced  to  receive 
a  Prussian  garrison.  Indeed,  with  the  exception  of  the  three 
fortresses  of  Brieg,  Glogau  and  Neisse,  and  one  or  two  minor 
places  like  Namslau  and  Ottmachau,  the  whole  province 
submitted  to  the  invader  almost  without  firing  a  shot,  nobles, 
townsfolk  and  peasantry  displaying  an  apathy  which  did  them 
little  credit.  By  the  end  of  January  these  three  fortresses 
alone  held  out.  The  time  which  Frederick  had  wasted  had 
been  turned  to  good  effect ;  and  he  was  now  learning  the  value 


1 741]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  ENEMIES 


n  7 

of  rapid  movements,  for  his  army  was  unable  to  go  into 
winter-quarters  but  had  to  maintain  the  blockades  of  these 
towns.  If  the  Austrians  could  gather  a  relieving  army  with 
anything  like  reasonable  speed,  the  Prussian  position  might 
prove  hazardous.  And  Maria  Theresa  was  sparing  no  effort 
to  avenge  the  injury  which  Frederick  had  done  her,  and  to 
make  him  pay  dearly  for  his  insolent  assumption  of  a  victor’s 
airs,  his  taking  it  for  granted  that  she  would  not  be  able  to 
regain  Silesia.  This  attitude  was  an  insult  above  all  to  the 
Austrian  army,  which  looked  upon  the  Prussians  as  mere 
soldiers  of  the  parade-ground,  and  relied  confidently  on  its 
own  experience  of  real  war  to  give  it  the  victory  over  these 
troops  who  had  never  seen  a  shot  fired  in  anger.1  The 
Queen  of  Hungary  therefore  rejected  with  scorn  the  proposals 
made  to  her  through  Baron  Gotter,  offering  her  Frederick’s 
assistance  against  other  enemies,  and  promising  his  vote  at 
the  Imperial  election  to  Francis  Stephen  of  Lorraine  if  she 
would  cede  the  Silesian  Duchies.  The  Chancellor,  Sinzen- 
dorf,  and  one  or  two  of  the  other  ministers  were  for 
yielding ;  but  Maria  Theresa  would  not  hear  of  concessions, 
and  Bartenstein  and  Stahremberg  were  equally  firm  for 
“  no  surrender.”  Moreover,  it  looked  as  though  she  were 
going  to  find  a  friend  in  need  in  George  II.  In  vain  Wal¬ 
pole  contended  that  what  Great  Britain  required  was  the  settle¬ 
ment  of  the  differences  between  Austria  and  Prussia  :  in  vain  he 
opposed  the  action  of  George  II  in  proceeding  to  Hanover  in 
May  1741  to  put  himself  at  the  head  of  the  force  he  was  collect¬ 
ing  there ;  the  English  nation  was  full  of  sympathy  for  Maria 
Theresa,  and  for  once  the  King  had  the  unusual  experience  of 
sharing  the  sentiments  of  his  subjects.  Walpole  had  to 
propose  in  Parliament  a  subsidy  of  £300,000  for  the  Queen 
of  Hungary,  and  George  II  planned  to  take  the  field  at  the 
head  of  a  considerable  force,  including,  besides  Dutch  and 
British,  12,000  Danes  and  Hessians  to  be  secured  by  a  British 
subsidy,  and  15,000  Hanoverians,  3000  at  his  expense  as 
Elector,  1 2,000  in  British  pay.  So  threatening,  indeed,  was 
his  attitude,  that  many  of  the  Prussian  reinforcements  destined 
for  Silesia  had  to  be  diverted  to  join  the  force  which  Frederick 
placed  near  Magdeburg  under  command  of  Leopold  of  Anhalt- 
Dessau  to  hold  Hanover  and  Saxony  in  check,  for  Augustus  III 

1  Cf.  von  Arneth,  i.  219. 


1 1 8  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1741 


also,  alarmed  at  the  success  of  his  Prussian  neighbour,  for  whom 
he  had  no  special  love,  was  negotiating  with  Maria  Theresa.  It 
should  also  be  mentioned  that  on  March  2nd  a  treaty,  amicably 
regulating  various  disputed  points  as  to  their  boundaries,  was 
signed  between  Austria  and  the  Porte,  the  Turk  thus  display¬ 
ing  a  very  different  spirit  from  the  Christian  neighbours  who 
sought  to  profit  by  the  embarrassments  of  Maria  Theresa. 

Meanwhile  the  army  wrhich  Neipperg  was  bringing  up 
through  Moravia  was  drawing  near  the  scene  of  action. 
Luckily  for  Frederick,  the  weakness  of  the  Austrian  army  and 
the  utter  inefficiency  of  its  administration  combined  with 
Neipperg’s  failure  to  appreciate  the  necessity  for  rapid  action 
to  make  its  movements  as  slow  as  Frederick’s  own  had  been 
in  December.  Thus  the  Prussians  were  able  to  storm  Glogau 
(March  9th)  and  to  bring  up  its  besiegers  to  join  the  King 
at  Schweidnitz  long  before  Neipperg  appeared  on  the  Silesian 
side  of  the  Riesengebirge. 

Had  Neipperg  been  a  man  of  any  real  capacity,  and  had 
he  made  proper  use  of  his  excellent  irregular  cavalry  to  con¬ 
ceal  his  own  movements  and  to  acquaint  him  with  the  dis¬ 
positions  of  the  Prussians,  he  might  have  brought  the  military 
career  of  Frederick  to  an  abrupt  and  inglorious  conclusion. 
The  Prussian  troops  were  unduly  scattered  and  out  of  support¬ 
ing  distance  from  each  other,  when  Neipperg,  moving  from 
Olmtitz  by  Freudenthal  on  Neisse,  burst  into  the  midst  of 
their  cantonments  (April  2nd).  Frederick  happened  to 
be  at  Jaegerndorf  with  some  4000  men,  and  might  easily 
have  been  cut  off  and  taken,  but  the  Austrian  was  utterly 
unaware  of  the  chance  before  him.  He  pushed  straight  on 
to  Neisse,  which  he  reached  on  April  4th,  letting  Frederick 
retire  from  Jaegerndorf  by  Steinau,  where  he  rallied  Kalkstein 
and  10,000  men,  Friedland  (April  6th),  and  Michelau,  wrhere 
he  crossed  to  the  left  of  the  Neisse  (April  8th),  to  Pogarell, 
where  the  detachment  which  had  been  blockading  Brieg  joined 
him  (April  9th).  Meanwhile  Neipperg,  having  relieved  Neisse, 
had  moved  on  towards  Brieg  and  Breslau,  to  which  last  place 
he  was  actually  nearer  than  Frederick  was ;  but  once  again  his 
slowness  and  his  total  ignorance  of  his  adversary’s  movements 
cast  away  the  advantage  on  which  he  had  stumbled.  On  the 
night  of  the  9th  he  reached  Mollwitz,  seven  miles  to  the 
North-Westward  of  Pogarell,  and  here  he  was  resting  his  troops 


1 7 4 1  ]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  ENEMIES 


119 

when,  about  midday  on  the  ioth,  news  was  brought  to  him  that 
the  Prussian  army  was  marching  against  him  in  full  battle  array. 

The  armies  which  were  to  fight  the  first  battle  of  the 
war  were  of  approximately  equal  strength,  roughly  20,000 
men  each ;  but  while  the  Prussians  had  but  4000  cavalry, 
Neipperg  had  8600  of  much  better  quality.  On  the  other 
hand,  Frederick  had  an  overwhelming  superiority  in  artillery, 
having  sixty  guns  to  eighteen.1  Both  armies  were  drawn 
up  in  the  same  style,  in  two  lines  with  the  infantry  on  the 
centre  and  the  cavalry  on  the  wings.  Owing  to  a  mistake  of 
their  commander,  Schulenberg,  the  Prussian  cavalry  on  the 
right  did  not  extend  outwards  as  far  as  they  should  have 
done.  Crowding  in  unduly  on  the  centre,  they  threw  the 
infantry  next  to  them  into  such  confusion  that  three  battalions 
had  to  fall  back  and  take  up  their  position  at  right  angles 
to  the  rest,  thus  covering  the  space  between  the  two  lines  of 
infantry.  It  was  largely  by  this  accident  that  the  fate  of  the 
battle  was  decided  ;  for  when  the  Austrian  left  wing  of  cavalry, 
sweeping  down  upon  the  Prussian  right,  broke  them  at  the 
first  shock  and  drove  them  from  the  field,  it  was  these  three 
battalions  which  checked  the  victors  when  they  turned  against 
the  Prussian  centre.  But  for  these  battalions  having  been  so 
posted  as  to  cover  the  exposed  flank  of  the  infantry,  the 
Austrian  horsemen  would  have  caught  the  Prussian  infantry 
as  they  faced  to  the  right  to  meet  the  charge  at  a  great 
disadvantage,  from  which  even  their  steadiness  and  excellent 
fire-discipline  might  have  failed  to  extricate  them.  As  it  was, 
Romer  and  his  cavalry  could  not  break  the  steady  lines  of  the 
Prussian  foot,  though  they  charged  repeatedly,  even  attacking 
the  second  line  in  rear  and  forcing  it  to  face  right  about  to 
repulse  the  attack.  Neipperg  had  meanwhile  pushed  his 
infantry  forward  to  support  the  advantage  gained  by  their 
cavalry,  for  the  Austrian  right  had  been  no  less  successful  than 
their  comrades  of  the  left,  but  the  rapid  fire  of  the  Prussian  in¬ 
fantry  backed  up  by  their  superiority  in  artillery  was  more  than 
the  Austrian  infantry  could  face,  and  they  wavered,  ceased  to 
advance,  and  halted.  For  a  time  the  fire-duel  continued,  then 
Schwerin — left  in  command  when  Frederick,  thinking  the  battle 
lost  by  the  defeat  of  his  cavalry,  had  joined  in  their  headlong 

1  Oncken  ( Zeitalter  Friedrichs  der  Grosse,  i.  323)  gives  the  Prussian  force  as 
35  squadrons  and  31  battalions,  the  Austrian  as  86  squadrons  and  18  battalions. 


120  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1741 


flight — gave  the  order  to  advance.  The  Austrians  at  once 
gave  way  and  fell  back  in  some  disorder  towards  Neisse,  the 
Prussians  making  no  attempt  to  pursue. 

Such  was  the  battle  of  Mollwitz,  an  action  of  far  more 
importance  than  many  in  which  much  greater  forces  have  been 
engaged.  In  military  history  it  is  remarkable  as  a  display  of 
the  possibilities  of  really  well-trained  and  disciplined  infantry. 
Before  Mollwitz  and  between  armies  of  equal  strength  the 
better  chance  would  have  been  held  to  be  possessed  by  the 
side  which  had  a  two  to  one  superiority  in  cavalry :  Mollwitz 
showed  the  impotence  of  cavalry  even  when  excellent  against 
steady  infantry  whose  fire-discipline  was  good.  It  was  a 
victory  for  the  army,  not  for  its  commander.  Schwerin  did 
much  to  encourage  his  men,  but  the  victory  was  not  due  to 
superiority  in  generalship  or  in  tactics.  It  was  the  lucky 
accident  which  placed  the  three  battalions  in  the  decisive 
position  on  the  right  flank  of  the  centre  which,  combined  with 
the  years  of  hard  work  on  the  parade-grounds  of  Potsdam,  won 
the  battle.  One  might  almost  fancy  that  the  spirit  of  Frederick 
William  cannot  have  been  far  away  when  the  army  that  he 
had  trained  was  put  to  its  first  real  test  and  came  through  it 
so  victoriously.  Frederick  Il’s  share  in  the  success  is  not  so 
easy  to  find. 

As  far  as  immediate  military  results  went  the  victory  was 
rather  barren.  Brieg  was  now  bombarded,  and  on  May  4th 
it  fell ;  but  Neipperg  remained  unmolested  in  his  camp  at 
Neisse,  against  which  the  Prussians  made  no  advance.  Thus 
if  defeated  at  Mollwitz  and  unsuccessful  in  his  endeavour  to 
sweep  the  Prussians  from  Silesia,  Neipperg  had  at  least 
checked  the  conquest  of  the  province  and  had  recovered  some 
lost  ground  ;  in  August,  indeed,  he  made  a  dash  on  Breslau 
which  Schwerin  just  forestalled  by  occupying  the  town  with 
8000  men;  and  when  at  last  the  Austrians  withdrew  from 
Silesia  and  left  Neisse  to  its  fate,  it  was  not  because  Frederick 
had  forced  them.  In  a  sense  it  was  his  work,  immediately 
it  was  the  appearance  of  another  enemy  on  the  scene. 

The  political  results  of  Mollwitz  had  been  far  more 
decisive  than  the  military.  Even  before  the  end  of  March 
the  “  forward  party  ”  at  Versailles  had  already  so  far  carried 
the  day  that  Marshal  Belleisle  set  out  to  visit  the  minor  Courts 
of  Germany,  and  to  win  by  persuasion  and  by  bribery  the 


1 741]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  ENEMIES 


1 2 1 


support  of  the  various  Electors  and  Princes  to  the  Bavarian 
candidature  for  the  Empire ;  but  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  an 
Austrian  victory  at  Mollwitz  would  have  greatly  altered  the 
complexion  of  affairs.  Mollwitz  seemed  to  promise  victories 
for  the  other  claimants.  Austria’s  incapacity  to  defend  herself 
was  published  to  the  world,  and  Bavarian,  Saxon  and  Spanish 
land-hunger  received  a  powerful  stimulant.  Had  Frederick 
been  defeated,  had  Austria  shown  herself  capable  of  defending 
her  rights  and  of  making  good  her  title  to  her  provinces 
at  the  point  of  the  bayonet,  these  Powers  might  have  found 
it  advisable  to  reconsider  their  proposed  policy.  Fleury’s 
conscientious  scruples  might  have  been  awakened,  he  might 
have  hailed  it  as  an  argument  for  combating  Belleisle’s  policy, 
and  have  used  this  means  of  recovering  the  control  of  affairs 
now  slipping  away  from  him.  As  it  was,  France  believed 
more  than  ever  that  the  day  had  come  for  the  final  overthrow 
of  the  Hapsburgs  and  for  the  consummation  of  the  work  of  the 
House  of  Bourbon.  Belleisle  did  not,  indeed,  at  once  succeed  in 
bringing  about  a  definite  agreement  with  the  victor  of  Mollwitz. 
His  first  interview  with  Frederick,  which  took  place  before 
Brieg  towards  the  end  of  April,  left  matters  rather  as  they 
stood.  Indeed  Frederick,  instead  of  welcoming  the  alliance 
which  the  French  envoy  proposed,  rather  sought  to  use  the 
mediation  of  England  to  arrange  an  accommodation  with 
Maria  Theresa.  Meanwhile  Belleisle  hastened  to  negotiate  a 
treaty  (May  28th)  by  which  Spain  and  Bavaria,  the  principal 
claimants  to  the  Hapsburg  heritage,  settled  on  their  respective 
shares,  while  France  by  the  Treaty  of  Nymphenburg  (May 
1 8th)  pledged  herself  definitely  to  support  the  Bavarian  on 
the  understanding  that  she  should  keep  her  own  gains.1 

Spain  was  already  stirring  and  preparing  to  forcibly  assert 
Don  Philip’s  claims  on  Lombardy.  Charles  Emmanuel  of 
Sardinia  and  his  ambitious  minister,  d’Ormea,  v/ere  on  the 

1  There  is  much  difference  of  opinion  as  to  what  exactly  was  arranged :  Droysen 
(. Friedrich  der  Grosse ,  vol.  i.  pp.  273  fif.),  with  whom  Oncken  (AG,  iii.  8,  vol.  i. 
P-355)  agrees,  would  seem  to  believe  that  the  treaty  usually  ascribed  to  May  1 8th  is  a 
fabrication,  that  the  Franco-Bavarian  alliance  dated  from  the  secret  treaty  of  1 7 27»  an<^ 
that  Belleisle  merely  negotiated  the  Spanish-Bavarian  treaty  :  von  Arneth  (Afar/a 
Theresa,  i.  p.  193)  and  Ranke  take  the  view  adopted  in  the  text :  the  essential  point 
is  that  Bavaria  accepted  French  aid  in  her  attack  upon  Austria  and  in  her  candidature 
for  the  Empire,  and  that  Belleisle  arranged  for  a  joint  attack  of  Maria  Theresa  s 
enemies  upon  her.  Cf.  also  Wolf,  p.  31. 


122  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1741 


alert,  balancing  the  inability  of  Austria  to  defend  herself 
against  the  danger  of  undue  acquisitions  by  the  Spanish 
Bourbons.  Augustus  III  of  Saxony,  anxious  not  to  find  him¬ 
self  on  the  weaker  side,  was  negotiating  with  Belleisle,  and  in 
July  a  promise  of  Moravia  and  Upper  Silesia  secured  his 
support  for  the  Bavarian  claims.  The  minor  Powers  followed 
this  lead.  The  Elector  Palatine,  no  longer  at  feud  with  his 
Bavarian  cousins,  and  Clement  Augustus  o  \  Cologne,1  brother 
of  the  “  bold  Bavarian  ”  himself,  were  anxious  to  see  the 
Imperial  dignity  in  their  family.  Philip  Charles  of  Eltz- 
Kempten,  Elector  of  Mayence  since  1734,  was  on  the  whole 
inclined  to  favour  Austria,  but  let  himself  be  guided  by  his 
nephew  Count  d’Eltz  into  accepting  Belleisle’s  overtures,  though 
without  enthusiasm.2  Francis  George  of  Schonborn  at  Treves 
( 1  729—  1 756)  followed  the  lead  given  him  by  his  neighbours, 
while  Wiirtemberg  imitated  the  larger  states  around  her  by 
advancing  claims  upon  parts  of  the  Hapsburg  dominions. 

But  even  with  these  dangers  impending,  Maria  Theresa 
resolutely  resisted  the  efforts  of  the  English  envoys  to  induce 
her  to  come  to  terms  with  Frederick.  All  that  the  arguments 
and  entreaties  of  Sir  Thomas  Robinson  could  win  from  her  was 
an  offer  of  Limburg ;  not  an  inch  of  Silesia  would  she  yield. 
Her  obstinacy  may  have  been  impolitic,  it  would  perhaps  have 
been  wiser  to  swallow  the  insult  to  her  pride  involved  in  making 
up  her  mind  to  the  loss  of  Silesia  and  accepting  Frederick’s 
assistance  against  her  other  enemies.  A  coalition  such  as  the 
English  ministers  desired,  of  Austria,  England  and  Hanover, 
Holland  and  Prussia,  might  have  proved  victorious  over  the 
Bourbons  and  Bavaria,  but  it  is  impossible  not  to  sympathise 
with  Maria  Theresa’s  indignant  rejection  of  the  idea ;  and 
what  she  thus  lost  is  to  some  extent  compensated  for  by  the 
moral  advantage  involved  in  her  magnificent  and  courageous 
obstinacy.  The  appeal  she  was  able  to  make  to  her  subjects 
did  awaken  their  slumbering  patriotism  and  sense  of  what  one 
may  call  “  Austrian  nationality  ”  :  it  would  have  been  but  a 
weak  appeal  that  she  could  have  made  to  any  sentiment  if  she 
had  stood  forward  as  the  ally  of  the  man  who  had  dealt  with 
her  so  treacherously  and  insolently. 

Frederick  therefore, finding  Maria  Theresa  obdurate, accepted 

1  Archbishop- Elector,  1723-1761. 

2  Cf.  FrhUric  11  and  Marie  There  sc,  i.  295  ff. 


1 7 4 r  ]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  HER  ENEMIES 


123 


the  offered  French  alliance.  By  the  Treaty  of  Breslau  (June  5  th, 
1 741), France  guaranteed  Breslau  and  Lower  Silesia  to  Frederick; 
he  in  return  gave  up  all  claim  on  Jiilich  and  Berg  in  favour  of 
the  Sulzbachs,  and  promised  his  vote  and  his  help  to  the  Elector 
of  Bavaria.  Such  a  treaty  must  effectually  deny  to  Frederick 
any  claim  to  have  had  the  interests  of  Germany  at  heart.  He 
placed  himself  at  the  disposal  of  the  Power  which  had  for  over 
a  hundred  years  been  the  greatest  foe  to  Germany  and  German 
nationality.  To  argue  that  Austria  drove  him  into  the  arms 
of  France  is  ridiculous.  There  was  another  alternative  :  he  might 
have  held  on  to  Silesia,  rejecting  the  French  alliance,  and  wait¬ 
ing  till  the  advance  of  the  Franco-Bavarians  forced  Maria 
Theresa  to  come  to  terms  with  him  to  save  Vienna.  The  fact 
that  he  would  have  preferred  to  make  terms  with  Maria  Theresa 
is  itself  an  indication  that  he  realised  that  the  intervention  of 
France  was  contrary  to  the  best  interests  of  Germany,  and  it 
was  only  his  own  aggression  and  rapacity  which  made  it 
impossible  for  the  Queen  of  Hungary  to  seek  the  alliance  of 
the  rising  North  German  Power  to  resist  the  insidious  attempt  of 
France  to  still  further  weaken  and  disunite  her  Eastern  neighbour. 

For  a  discussion  of  the  wisdom  of  the  policy  of  France 
this  is  hardly  the  place,  yet  it  should  be  noticed  that  a  different 
course  of  action  might  have  suited  France  better.  A  statesman 
of  keener  perceptions  than  Fleury,  a  man  of  more  political 
insight  and  broader  ideas  than  Belleisle,  might  have  seen  that 
it  was  not  from  Austria  that  France  had  anything  to  fear.  If 
it  was  to  the  interest  of  France  that  Germany  should  continue 
weak  and  disunited,  there  was  much  to  be  said  for  seeking  to 
induce  Austria  to  make  slight  concessions  to  Bavaria,  Spain, 
Sardinia  and  Saxony,  even  perhaps  to  cede  part  of  the  Austrian 
Netherlands  to  France  herself;  but  by  assisting  her  against  this 
new  enemy  France  might  have  earned  Maria  Theresa’s  gratitude, 
and  have  separated  her  from  England.  It  would  be  fatuous 
to  urge  that  Fleury  ought  in  1 740—1  74 1  to  have  foreseen  Sedan 
and  the  loss  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  but  the  promptitude  and  decision 
of  Frederick’s  action,  the  evidence  of  his  strength  afforded  by 
Mollwitz,  his  obvious  self-confidence  and  ambition,  might  well 
have  made  Fleury  pause.  If  it  was  his  object  to  prevent  the 
rise  in  Germany  of  any  Power  capable  of  giving  France  trouble, 
he  might  well  have  asked  himself  whether  it  was  good  policy 
to  assist  a  monarch  so  evidently  capable  of  helping  himself. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR 

TO  THE  TREATY  OF  WORMS 

IT  seems  to  have  been  at  a  meeting  of  the  Conseil  du  Roi  on 
July  iith  that  Louis  XV  and  his  Ministers  decided  what 
help  they  would  send  to  their  German  allies.  While  one  army 
under  Belleisle  himself  was  to  join  the  Elector  of  Bavaria  in 
yet  another  thrust  down  the  Danube  valley  at  Vienna,  a  second, 
to  be  commanded  by  Marshal  Maillebois,  was  to  cross  the 
Rhine  into  Westphalia  and  so  hold  in  check  the  “  Pragmatic 
Army  ”  which  George  II  was  collecting  in  Hanover.  But  for 
the  present  France  abstained  from  a  formal  declaration  of  war 
against  Austria,  announcing  that  she  was  merely  acting  as  an 
ally  of  the  Elector  of  Bavaria,  not  as  a  principal,  and  that  her 
troops  were  to  be  considered  as  mere  “  auxiliaries  ”  of  the 
Bavarians.1 

When,  on  August  15  th,  the  leading  division  of  the  French 
crossed  the  Rhine  near  Fort  Louis,  hostilities  had  already  been 
begun  with  the  Bavarians’  seizure  of  Passau  on  the  last  day 
of  July.  However,  it  was  not  till  September  11th  that  their 
combined  forces,  50,000  strong  of  whom  34,000  were  French, 
broke  up  from  Scharding  and  advanced  down  the  Danube. 
On  September  14th  they  reached  Linz  which  made  no  resist¬ 
ance,  for  the  partisans  of  Bavaria  were  numerous  in  Upper 
Austria,  and  nobles  and  burghers  flocked  to  take  the  oaths  of 
allegiance  to  Charles  Albert  and  to  acknowledge  him  as  their 
ruler.  Had  the  Franco -Bavarians  pushed  on  towards  Vienna 
with  any  vigour,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  they  could  have  failed 
to  take  the  city.  Its  fortifications  were  not  strong,  its  garrison 
was  weak,  and  there  was  no  quarter  from  which  any  help  could 

1  A  convention  regulating  the  relations  and  status  of  these  “auxiliaries”  was 
signed  at  Versailles  by  d’Amelot  and  the  Bavarian  envoy  Grimberghen  on  August 
9th. 


124 


1 741]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  I 


125 


be  obtained,  for  the  only  armies  of  Austria  were  that  of 
Neipperg,  far  away  at  Neisse,  and  the  force  with  which  Traun 
was  preparing  to  defend  Lombardy  against  the  threatened 
Spanish  attack.  But  not  only  did  Charles  Albert  spend  nearly 
three  weeks  in  useless  inaction  at  Linz,  not  moving  on  till 
October  5  th,  but  when  he  had  reached  St.  Polten  on  October 
2 1st  and  was  almost  within  sight  of  Vienna,  he  suddenly 
changed  his  plan,  retraced  his  steps  up  the  Danube  to  Maut¬ 
hausen,  crossed  to  the  left  bank  (Oct.  24th)  and  moved 
thence  by  Freystadt  upon  Budweis  in  Bohemia.  The  reasons 
for  this  remarkable  move  are  hard  to  understand.  That 
Charles  Albert  was  afraid  that  his  communications  with 
Bavaria  might  be  cut  by  Austrian  troops  recalled  from  Italy 
seems  unlikely,  in  any  case  it  was  not  a  serious  danger ;  that 
he  had  no  siege-guns  is  not  a  sufficient  explanation,  for  he  was 
in  communication  by  river  with  the  arsenals  of  Ingolstadt  and 
other  fortresses  ;  more  probably  he  did  not  trust  either  his 
Saxon  or  his  Prussian  ally,  and  believed  that  only  by  moving 
in  person  to  Bohemia  could  he  prevent  one  or  other  of  those 
two  friends  from  forestalling  him  by  annexing  the  province. 
The  responsibility  for  this  fatal  mistake,  which  Charles  Albert 
adopted  at  General  Torring’s  advice,  must  be  borne  by  the 
Elector  himself;  but  Belleisle,  though  absent  at  Frankfort  at  the 
time,  owing  to  the  preparations  for  the  Imperial  election,  ap¬ 
proved  of  it,  since  he  wished  to  draw  nearer  Frederick  of  whose 
sincerity  he  had  suspicions  which  were  only  too  well  grounded. 

Maria  Theresa  had  faced  the  Bavarian  attack  with  fortitude 
and  resolution.  Ten  regiments  were  recalled  from  Italy,  every 
effort  was  made  to  raise  recruits  and  bring  together  all  available 
soldiers,  while  her  famous  appeal  to  the  loyalty  and  patriotism 
of  her  Hungarian  subjects  really  proved  a  remarkable  success, 
even  though  the  “  insurrection  ”  was  only  decreed  by  the  Diet 
at  Pressburg  after  the  Oueen  had  made  considerable  constitu¬ 
tional  concessions  and  restored  many  political  privileges.  Her 
courage  in  throwing  overboard  the  traditional  suspicion  and 
distrust  with  which  the  German  ministers  of  the  Hapsburgs  had 
always  regarded  the  Hungarians,  was  justified  by  the  altered 
attitude  of  that  people.  But  even  though  the  “  insurrectionary  ” 
levy  flocked  to  the  Austrian  standards,  time  must  elapse  before 
it  could  be  ready  for  battle,  and  meanwhile  the  danger  was 
pressing  and  the  need  great.  From  one  quarter  only  could 


126  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1741 


Vienna  be  saved,  for  George  II,  Austria’s  only  faithful  ally, 
had  been  forced  by  the  approach  of  Maillebois  to  conclude  a 
treaty  of  neutrality  (Sept.  27th),  by  which  he  pledged 
himself  to  abstain  from  assisting  Maria  Theresa  or  from  giving 
his  vote  to  Francis  Stephen  of  Lorraine.  Neipperg’s  army 
was  the  one  force  which  could  save  Vienna,  and  Neipperg’s 
army  could  only  be  set  free  by  accepting  Frederick’s  terms. 
It  was  a  bitter  humiliation  for  Maria  Theresa,  but  there  was 
no  alternative.  In  vain  she  offered  West  Flanders  to  Louis  XV, 
the  Milanese  and  Tuscany  to  Bavaria,  Lusatia  to  Saxony. 
England  continually  pressed  her  to  come  to  terms  with 
Frederick  in  order  that  she  might  devote  all  her  energies  to 
the  only  object  about  which  the  English  cared,  the  defeat  of 
France.  Unable  to  fight  both  Frederick  and  the  Franco- 
Bavarians,  she  was  compelled  to  free  herself  of  one  enemy,  and 
on  October  9th  the  secret  Convention  of  Klein-Schellenaorf 
relieved  her  of  the  active  hostility  of  Prussia  at  the  sacrifice  of 
Lower  Silesia  and  of  Neisse  which  was  surrendered  to  the 
enemy  after  a  mock  siege.  Frederick  was  glad  to  come  to 
terms.  His  men  had  been  in  the  field  for  ten  months,  and 
badly  needed  rest.  To  be  spared  the  loss  of  life  and  the 
trouble  of  taking  Neisse  was  no  small  gain.  Moreover,  he  dis¬ 
trusted  France,  and  had  no  wish  to  see  her  too  successful. 

Neipperg,  who  had  been  largely  reinforced,  accordingly 
broke  up  from  Neisse  on  October  16th,  his  march  being  directed 
upon  Prague,  now  threatened  by  20,000  Saxons  under 
Rutowski,1  and  by  a  division  of  French  and  Bavarians  under 
Polastron  from  Amberg  and  Pilsen  as  well  as  by  their  main 
body  from  Budweis.  Like  Silesia,  Bohemia  was  not  in  a  good 
state  to  meet  an  attack  ;  the  province  had  been  all  but  swept 
bare  of  troops,  and  even  so  important  a  point  as  Prague 
was  weakly  held.  Once  again  a  fatal  slowness  characterised 
Neipperg’s  movements.  Not  till  November  7th  did  he  reach 
Znaym,  where  Francis  Stephen  joined  and  took  command. 
By  November  17th  the  army  reached  Neuhaus,  where  it  halted 
for  four  days,  a  mistake  of  the  greatest  importance,  for  a 
rapid  advance  would  have  brought  them  to  Prague  in  time, 
the  enemy  being  still  widely  separated.  As  it  was,  the  delay 
allowed  the  Franco-Bavarians  to  concentrate  under  the  walls 

1  A  natural  son  of  Augustus  II,  and  half-brother  of  the  more  famous  Maurice  de 
Saxe. 


1 74 1  ]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  I 


127 


of  Prague  on  the  23  rd,  the  Austrians  being  then  at  Tabor, 
over  fifty  miles  to  the  Southward.  At  the  advice  of  Rutowski, 
whom  Maurice  de  Saxe  strongly  supported,  ah  assault  was 
at  once  attempted,  and,  brilliantly  conducted  by  Maurice,  it 
proved  a  complete  success  (night  of  Nov.  24th  to  25th). 

Too  late  to  save  Prague,  a  failure  for  which  he  had  only 
his  own  slowness  to  blame,  Francis  Stephen  and  his  40,000 
men  fell  back  from  Beneschau  to  a  position  in  the  rough  country 
between  Neuhaus  and  Tabor,  and  there  stood  at  bay.  For  the 
time  both  sides  were  inactive  and  operations  at  a  standstill,  the 
only  move,  an  Austrian  attack  on  Pisek  (Dec.  26th),  being 
easily  repulsed  by  de  Broglie,  who  had  just  (Dec.  20th)  taken 
over  the  command  from  Belleisle,  the  latter  retaining  his  diplo¬ 
matic  functions  for  the  election  was  now  at  hand. 

So  far  both  sides  had  shown  up  but  ill.  Both  had  moved 
with  a  culpable  indifference  to  the  value  of  time ;  but  the 
Elector’s  errors  in  strategy  were  not  confined  to  slowness  alone. 
Instead  of  striking  at  Vienna,  the  great  seat  of  his  enemy’s 
power,  when  he  had  it  almost  in  his  grasp,  he  had  concentrated 
his  whole  strength  upon  taking  a  relatively  unimportant  town 
in  Bohemia,  whose  capture  must  have  been  involved  in  the  fall 
of  the  Hapsburg  capital.  He  had  mistaken  his  objective ;  he 
had  struck  at  the  branches  not  at  the  trunk  of  the  tree,  and  in 
so  doing  he  had  exposed  Bavaria. 

For  while  the  campaign  in  Bohemia  had  resulted  in  a 
deadlock,  Maria  Theresa  had  managed  to  collect  at  Vienna  a 
second  army,  the  nucleus  of  which  was  formed  by  4000  cavalry 
and  8000  regular  infantry  from  Italy,  with  14,000  wild 
irregulars  from  Hungary  and  the  border  countries,  Croats, 
Pandours,  Tolpatches  and  all  the  other  light  cavalry,  who  had 
no  superiors  in  Europe  in  the  arts  of  the  raider  and  the 
forager.  And  luckily  for  Maria  Theresa  she  had  available  in 
Khevenhiiller  a  general  who  possessed  no  small  degree  of  that 
promptitude,  resolution  and  energy  so  lacking  in  Neipperg  and 
Francis  Stephen. 

It  was  on  December  31st  that  Khevenhiiller  advanced  up 
the  Danube  with  16,000  men,  Barenklau  with  10,000  more, 
mainly  irregulars,  co-operating  by  moving  on  Munich  through 
Tyrol.  The  move  was  an  instant  success:  Upper  Austria  was 
recovered,  Bavaria  overrun  and  laid  waste  by  Barenklau’s  moss¬ 
troopers.  Segur  with  the  French  troops  left  behind  on  the 


128  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1741 


Danube,  some  10,000  strong,  was  driven  in  on  Linz  and 
cooped  up  there.  Unable  to  escape,  he  was  forced  to  capitulate 
on  Jan.  24th,  Torring,  who  tried  in  vain  to  save  him, 
being  beaten  by  Barenklau  at  Scharding  (Jan.  17th)  and 
driven  back  to  Ingolstadt.  It  was  a  remarkable  coincidence 
that  the  very  day  that  Segur  surrendered  and  that  Passau  also 
fell  into  Austrian  hands,  Charles  Albert  was  being  elected 
Emperor  at  Frankfurt  as  Charles  VII.1  Similarly,  on  the  day 
of  the  new  Emperor’s  coronation  (Feb.  1 2th),  his  capital, 
Munich,  was  concluding  a  capitulation  to  save  itself  from 
being  plundered  by  Menzel’s  hussars.  With  the  exception 
of  Ingolstadt  and  one  or  two  other  strong  places,  all  Bavaria 
was  in  Austrian  hands. 

But  Maria  Theresa’s  successes  had  alarmed  Frederick,  and 
just  as  he  had  concluded  the  Convention  of  Klein-Schellendorf 
behind  the  backs  of  his  allies,  so  now  he  proceeded  to  break  it 
when  it  was  no  longer  convenient  to  keep  it.  It  had  served  his 
purpose :  his  men  were  refreshed  by  four  months’  rest,  and  he 
had  obtained  Neisse  without  fighting  for  it.  His  allegation 
that  Austria  had  failed  to  keep  the  convention  secret  was 
a  palpable  untruth :  Austria’s  interest  was  to  keep  it  dark, 
and  it  does  seem  that  Austria  had  tried  to  do  so ;  whereas 
within  three  weeks  of  signing  it  Frederick  had  signed  a 
treaty  with  France,  Bavaria  and  Saxony  for  a  partition  of 
the  Austrian  dominions,2  a  fairly  sufficient  test  of  his  sincerity. 
Frederick  and  his  allies,  however,  found  it  harder  to  decide 
upon  a  plan  of  campaign  than  upon  the  terms  of  their 
proposed  partition  of  Maria  Theresa’s  dominions.  Even 
before  the  news  of  the  fall  of  Linz  arrived  there  had  been 
great  debates.  De  Broglie,  supported  by  Maurice  de  Saxe, 
was  very  anxious  for  a  move  due  South  to  save  Bavaria  by  a 
direct  attack  on  the  Austrian  main  army.  This  force  was 
lying  between  Iglau,  Neuhaus,  Budweis  and  Tabor,  itself 
inactive  but  materially  assisting  Khevenhiiller’s  operations 
by  protecting  them  from  any  interference  by  de  Broglie. 
Frederick,  on  the  other  hand,  favoured  an  invasion  of  Moravia, 
by  which  he  would  turn  the  right  flank  of  the  Austrians  and 
threaten  Vienna.  But  his  allies  objected  to  his  proposals  as 

1  The  Elector  Palatine  managed  to  purchase  with  his  vote  the  renunciation  of  the 
Hohenzollern  claim  on  Julich  and  Berg  in  favour  of  the  Margrave  of  Sulzbach. 

2  Yon  Arneth,  i.  p.  335  ;  cf.  ii.  p.  28. 


1742]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  I 


129 


they  would  have  involved  his  using  their  troops  to  carry  out 
his  plan.1  Finally,  they  consented  to  let  their  left  under 
Polastron  assist  Frederick’s  invasion  of  Moravia  by  attacking 
Iglau.  The  Prussians  had  already  crossed  the  frontier  of 
Moravia  before  the  end  of  December  and  had  occupied  Glatz 
and  Olmutz,  and  when  Frederick  started  from  Wirchau  on 
February  5th,  he  was  almost  unopposed.  However,  when  the 
news  of  Segur’s  capitulation  arrived,  Polastron  was  at  once 
recalled,  though  Frederick  pushed  on,  furious  at  what  he 
styled  this  “  desertion.”  His  advanced  guard  got  within  forty 
miles  of  Vienna  and  Ziethen’s  cavalry  penetrated  even  nearer,  but 
Briinn,  to  which  he  had  laid  siege,  resisted  stoutly,  de  Broglie 
refused  to  move,  the  Saxons  failed  to  bring  up  a  promised  siege- 
train,  and  with  Hungarian  irregular  cavalry  menacing  his  com¬ 
munications  with  Silesia  Frederick  had  no  alternative  but  to 
retreat.  By  April  17th  he  was  at  Chrudim  in  Bohemia,  very 
ill-content  with  de  Broglie,  though  the  latter  after  Klein- 
Schellendorf  had  no  reason  to  trust  Frederick  too  far,  and 
might  fairly  plead  that  his  original  plan  had  been  the  better, 
since  the  enemy’s  army  was  the  true  objective,  while  his  own 
corps  was  hardly  in  condition  for  much  hard  work.  Indeed, 
it  was  partly  with  the  idea  of  securing  his  own  retreat  that 
about  this  time  de  Broglie  occupied  Eger  and  thereby  opened 
communications  with  Harcourt,  who  had  just  reached  the 
Upper  Danube  with  some  reinforcements  from  France. 

Meanwhile  the  Austrians,  now  under  Prince  Charles  of 
Lorraine,  were  about  to  take  the  offensive.  The  Saxons  had 
already  been  driven  back  into  Bohemia,  while  three  regiments 
of  cavalry,  four  of  infantry  and  13,000  Croats,  whom  Kheven- 
hiiller  had  rather  unwillingly  detached  (Feb.  19th)  from 
his  army,  came  up  from  Bavaria.  On  May  10th,  30,000 
Austrians 2  were  at  Saar  on  the  Sasawa,  moving  on  Prague 
with  the  double  object  of  cutting  in  between  Frederick  and 
de  Broglie,  and  of  falling  on  the  latter  before  his  reinforcements 
could  arrive.  But  the  move  took  them  right  across  Frederick’s 
front ;  and  though  the  failure  of  his  intelligence  department 
and  the  unduly  scattered  positions  of  his  troops  caused  him 
to  miss  his  best  chance,  he  did  succeed  in  concentrating 

1  Cf.  Maurice’s  letter  to  Frederick,  comparing  the  latter’s  behaviour  at  Mollwitz 
with  that  of  de  Broglie  at  Pisek,  Frederic  //  et  Marie  Therise ,  ii.  196. 

“12  regiments  of  cavalry,  13  of  infantry  and  the  Croats. 

9 


130  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1742 


28,000  men  at  Chrudim  on  the  13th.  On  the  15th  he 
moved  forward  to  Kuttenberg,  which  he  reached  next  day, 
Leopold  the  younger  of  Anhalt-Dessau  and  his  rear  division 
arriving  at  Chotusitz. 

Charles  of  Lorraine  had  planned  to  surprise  the  Prussian 
force  near  Chotusitz  on  the  morning  of  May  17th,  but  the 
night  march  by  which  he  attempted  to  carry  out  this  scheme 
went  wrong,  and  Leopold,  learning  his  danger,  was  able  to 
warn  the  King  in  time  for  him  to  bring  back  his  division  from 
Kuttenberg  before  8  a.m.  As  at  Mollwitz,  both  sides  were 
drawn  up  in  two  lines  with  the  cavalry  on  the  wings.  On 
the  Prussian  right  Biiddenbrock’s  cavalry  overlapped  their 
opponents,  on  their  left  Waldow’s  horsemen  should  have  rested 
on  a  park  wall,  but  to  do  this  they  were  somewhat  unduly 
extended,  so  that  the  Austrian  cavalry  here  charged  and 
routed  them,  while  their  infantry,  outflanking  the  Prussian 
centre,  attacked  and  captured  part  of  Chotusitz.  Biiddenbrock, 
however,  had  overthrown  Bathyanny’s  cavalry,  only  to  be 
checked  by  von  Thiingen’s  infantry,  and  routed  and  driven 
off  by  the  cavalry  of  the  second  line.  It  was  at  this  critical 
moment  that  Frederick,  arriving  from  Kuttenberg  with  the 
reserve,  restored  the  day.  He  seized  the  chance  given  him  by 
the  fact  that  the  Austrian  cavalry  were  chasing  Biiddenbrock  off 
towards  Kuttenberg  and  had  thus  left  the  flank  of  their  infantry 
exposed,  to  shake  their  cohesion  by  a  heavy  cannonade  and 
then  to  hurl  his  division  upon  the  unprotected  flank.  His 
vigorous  attack  forced  the  Austrian  left  and  centre  to  retire. 
This  decided  the  day ;  for  Chotusitz  was  still  in  dispute,  and 
unfortunately  for  the  Austrians  the  cavalry  of  their  right  were 
pillaging  Leopold’s  camp  to  the  neglect  of  their  duties. 
Prince  Charles  was  able  to  draw  his  men  off  in  good  order, 
for  with  the  Prussian  cavalry  practically  destroyed  Frederick 
could  not  pursue.  The  stout  fight  made  by  the  Austrians 
who,  if  their  total  losses  were  nearly  7000  had  inflicted 
some  5000  casualties  on  the  Prussians,  including  2000  killed, 
and  had  practically  annihilated  the  Prussian  cavalry,  made 
no  small  impression  on  Frederick.  “  It  was  a  Prussian 
victory,  but  hardly  an  Austrian  defeat,”  says  von  Arneth ;  and 
there  is  some  truth  in  the  judgment,  for  Frederick  remained 
absolutely  inactive  and  allowed  Charles  of  Lorraine  to  reinforce 
Lobkowitz  unmolested.  Lobkowitz,  moving  down  the  Moldau 


1742]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  I 


131 

on  Prague  as  Charles  of  Lorraine  moved  forward  to  Chotusitz, 
had  been  attacked  by  de  Broglie  at  Sahay  (May  26th)  and 
had  retired  again  to  Budweis  ;  but  Frederick’s  inaction  enabled 
the  Austrians,  who  outnumbered  the  French  by  two  to  one,  to 
resume  the  advance  and  drive  them  in  on  Prague  after  some 
sharp  fighting.  Unable  to  hold  Frauenberg,  de  Broglie  retired 
to  Pisek,  thence  to  Pilsen,  and  finally  to  Prague,  hard  pressed 
by  the  Croats,  and  utterly  unassisted  by  Frederick  (June  4th 
to  13  th);  the  garrisons  he  left  behind  were  promptly  cut  off 
and  taken,  and  the  fall  of  Pilsen  severed  the  communications 
between  the  French  armies  of  Bohemia  and  Bavaria. 

The  explanation  of  Frederick’s  inaction  is  simple  enough. 
Chotusitz  had  been  fought  for  political  reasons,  as  a  move  in 
the  diplomatic  game.  Distrusting  his  allies,  alarmed  at  the  pro¬ 
spect  of  the  active  intervention  of  England  on  behalf  of  Maria 
Theresa,  for  in  February  Walpole  had  fallen  and  in  the  new 
ministry  Carteret  was  in  charge  of  foreign  affairs,  and  discouraged 
by  his  failure  in  Moravia,  Frederick  was  thinking  of  leaving 
P'rance  and  the  Emperor  in  the  lurch.  It  was  from  him  that  the 
first  overtures  came  ;  and  if  the  Austrians  had  some  difficulty  in 
believing  in  his  sincerity,  they  soon  saw  it  was  to  their  interest 
to  close  with  him.  On  June  1  ith  the  Preliminaries  of  Breslau 
promised  Frederick  Glatz  and  Upper  and  Lower  Silesia — 
with  the  exception  of  Troppau  and  Tetschen — and  on  July 
28th  a  definite  peace  was  signed  at  Berlin.  Notwithstand¬ 
ing  his  protestations  of  devotion  to  the  cause  of  his  allies, 
Frederick  had  not  hesitated  to  desert  them  when  he  found  he 
could  get  what  he  wanted  from  Maria  Theresa.  His  assertion 
that  he  only  anticipated  France  in  this  treaty  seems  unsup¬ 
ported  by  the  facts ;  so  far  from  being  about  to  come  to 
terms  with  her,  France  was  steadily  refusing  all  Maria  Theresa’s 
offers.1 

Frederick’s  desertion,  coupled  with  that  of  Saxony,  which 
under  the  influence  of  Great  Britain  definitely  acceded  to  the 
Peace  of  Berlin  on  September  7th,  left  the  French  army  of 
Bohemia  in  a  perilous  position.  Not  only  was  it  weakened 
by  a  long  campaign,  by  hard  work  and  the  privations  due  to 
the  inefficient  management  of  its  supplies,  but  Belleisle,  who 
had  resumed  the  command,  found  himself  exposed  to  greatly 
superior  forces,  absolutely  isolated  and  “  in  the  air.”  It  helped 

1  Frtdtric  n  et  Marie  There se ,  ii.  340. 


132  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1742 


him  but  little  that  Harcourt  with  10,000  men  from  France 
had  reinforced  the  Bavarians  and  was  holding  Khevenhiiller’s 
diminished  forces  in  check  ;  for  if  Harcourt  could  “  contain  ” 
Khevenhiiller  he  could  do  no  more,  and  had  he  attempted 
to  move  across  the  Bohmer  Wald  to  the  relief  of  Prague 
he  would  have  given  the  enterprising  Austrian  an 
admirable  opportunity  for  using  his  light  troops  to  full 
advantage. 

The  interest  of  the  situation  was  now  centred  at  Prague, 
where  the  French  garrison  was  holding  out  courageously. 
Maria  Theresa  was  most  anxious  to  secure  them  as  prisoners ; 
their  unconditional  surrender  would  be  some  compensation  for 
the  injury  France  had  done  her,  and  would  be  a  valuable 
diplomatic  asset.  Her  idea  was  to  obtain  an  equivalent  for 
Silesia,  and  for  that  purpose  Bavaria  seemed  well  adapted,  in 
which  case  it  would  be  left  to  France  to  compensate  the 
Elector.  France  was  equally  set  on  rescuing  Belleisle’s  army, 
and  as  the  task  was  beyond  Harcourt’s  means,  it  was  decided 
to  utilise  the  force  on  the  Lower  Rhine  with  which  Maillebois 
had  till  now  been  overawing  Hanover.  By  the  end  of  August 
Maillebois  was  on  the  move,  by  September  12th  he  was  at 
Amberg  in  the  Upper  Palatinate,  whereupon  the  Austrians  by 
orders  from  Vienna  raised  the  siege  and  moved  Westward  to 
meet  him,  leaving  9000  light  horse  to  continue  the  blockade. 

As  Maillebois  approached  the  French  division  from 
Bavaria,  now  under  Maurice  de  Saxe,  moved  up  to  join 
him,  which  it  did  at  Bramahof  in  September.  Khevenhiiller, 
executing  a  parallel  march,  joined  the  Grand  Duke  of 
Tuscany,  who  was  at  Heyd  barring  the  road  to  Prague,  on 
September  27th.  His  departure  from  the  Danube  allowed 
Seckendorff  to  recover  Bavaria.  On  October  7  th  the 
Bavarians  reoccupied  Munich.  Barenklau,  too  weak  to  hold 
his  ground,  fell  back  behind  the  Inn,  leaving  garrisons  in 
Passau  and  Scharding. 

Neither  of  the  main  armies  was  directed  with  much  energy 
or  skill,  for  Saxe  alone  among  the  commanders  was  anxious 
for  battle.  Not  till  October  6th  did  Maillebois  advance  from 
Bramahof  to  Eger  (8th)  and  Karden  (10th);  he  apparently 
hoped  that  this  would  allow  the  French  from  Prague  to  move 
out  towards  Leitmeritz  and  so  join  him ;  but  though  the 
garrison  could  easily  have  made  their  way  out  through  the 


1742]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  I 


T33 


cordon  of  disorderly  and  inefficient  irregulars,  Broglie  and 
Belleisle  held  on  to  Prague,  hoping  that  Maillebois  would  come 
through  to  them,  and  that  Bohemia  would  yet  be  theirs. 

But  Maillebois  was  doing  nothing  of  the  sort.  Bad  roads, 
bad  weather,  tired  and  ill-fed  troops,  dismayed  and  disheartened 
him :  beaten  without  a  battle,  he  fell  back  to  Eger,  from 
there  to  Neustadt  (Oct.  27th),  and  then  moved  slowly  away  to 
Bavaria,  where  he  took  up  his  winter-quarters  (Nov.).  Only 
a  thoroughly  inefficient  and  over-cautious  commander  like  the 
Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany  could  have  let  slip  the  chance  afforded 
by  this  retreat ;  instead  of  falling  on  Maillebois  as  he  retired, 
Francis  Stephen  let  him  get  away  unfought  and  unimpeded. 
Lobkowitz  was  sent  back  to  take  Leitmeritz,  thereby  isolating 
Prague  of  which  he  then  resumed  the  siege,  while  the  main 
army  moved  slowly  South,  parallel  with  Maillebois,  like  him 
crossing  to  the  right  bank  of  the  Danube,  at  Braunau 
(Nov.  1 2th),  and  going  into  winter-quarters.  It  is  difficult 
to  say  which  commander  showed  least  enterprise  and  least 
appreciation  of  the  real  needs  of  the  situation  and  of  those  first 
principles  of  strategy,  which  concentrate  attention  on  the 
importance  of  bringing  one’s  enemy  to  action  and  rendering 
him  incapable  of  doing  damage  rather  than  on  out-manoeuvring 
and  evading. 

At  Prague  Belleisle  was  now  in  sole  command,  for  de 
Broglie  had  escaped  just  before  communications  were  cut. 
The  garrison  might  easily  have  held  out  some  weeks  longer ; 
but  Belleisle,  seeing  no  hope  of  relief,  decided  to  attempt  to 
break  out.  To  Chevert  he  entrusted  the  task  of  getting  what 
terms  he  could  for  the  6000  invalids  and  details  who  were  left 
behind,  and  on  the  night  of  December  i6th/i7th,  3000  horse 
and  11,000  infantry  pierced  Lobkowitz’s  lax  blockade  and 
after  a  trying  march,  which  cost  them  1500  men  in  ten  days, 
reached  Eger  on  the  27th.  Lobkowitz,  who  ought  never  to 
have  let  them  get  through,  also  failed  to  pursue  properly,  but 
his  culminating  error  was  in  allowing  Chevert  to  capitulate 
with  the  honours  of  war  (Jan.  3rd)  and  to  retire  to  Eger. 
Chevert  and  his  invalids  could  never  have  held  the  town  against 
an  assault ;  but  Lobkowitz,  a  Bohemian  nobleman  who  had  much 
property  in  Prague,  allowed  Chevert’s  threats  to  burn  the  town 
to  frighten  him  into  granting  such  easy  terms. 

Still  even  if  Belleisle  and  most  of  his  shattered  regiments 


134  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1743 


had  managed  to  slip  through  Maria  Theresa’s  hands,  Prague 
was  once  more  under  the  Austrian  rule,  Bohemia,  with  the 
exception  of  Eger  and  one  or  two  other  posts,  was  free  from 
the  French,  and  Belleisle’s  great  scheme  had  failed  completely. 
If  it  had  benefited  any  one  it  was  Frederick  II,  who  had  used 
Belleisle  and  the  French  as  the  catspaw  with  which  he  had 
secured  Maria  Theresa’s  reluctant  consent  to  his  possession  of 
Silesia.  But  the  French  had  not  done  with  Germany  yet : 
1743  had  more  disasters  in  store  for  them  and  their  luckless 
Bavarian  client.  The  year  opened  with  the  death  (Jan.  29th) 
of  the  aged  Cardinal  on  whom  so  large  a  share  of  the 
responsibility  for  the  war  must  rest ;  latterly  Fleury  had  shown 
a  desire  to  come  to  terms  with  Austria,  even  to  anticipate 
1756,  and  his  death  removed  the  chief  influence  in  favour  of 
peace ;  for  though  Belleisle  was  discredited,  the  man  who  now 
came  to  the  front  as  the  director  of  foreign  affairs,  the  Due  de 
Noailles,  urged  a  vigorous  prosecution  of  the  war.  Cardinal 
Tencin,  who  came  nearer  than  the  other  ministers  to  succeeding 
Fleury  as  First  Minister,  was  more  inclined  towards  throwing 
the  strength  of  France  into  the  scale  on  the  side  of  Spain  in 
the  West  Indian  war  then  raging,  but  he  did  not  oppose  de 
Noailles’  war  policy  in  Germany. 

During  the  winter  there  was  much  negotiating.  England 
instigated  Austria  to  offer  terms  to  the  Emperor,  hoping  so  to 
detach  him  from  the  French  alliance  and  to  add  him  to  a 
coalition  against  France.  But  as  the  Emperor  held  out  for 
the  complete  restoration  of  Bavaria,  and  would  not  agree 
to  the  compensation  elsewhere  which  Maria  Theresa  proposed, 
the  negotiations  were  broken  off.  The  only  military  event 
of  the  winter  was  the  relief  of  Eger  by  du  Chayla  (April) ;  the 
garrison  ought  to  have  been  withdrawn,  but  was  foolishly 
reinforced  and  replenished,  though  no  military  advantage  could 
be  hoped  for  from  leaving  it  there. 

It  was  at  the  beginning  of  May  that  the  Austrians  took  the 
offensive  on  the  Danube.  The  French  and  Bavarians  were 
not  on  good  terms :  de  Broglie’s  corps  was  in  a  thoroughly 
bad  condition,  its  67  infantry  battalions  mustered  hardly 
27,000  men,  and  91  squadrons  barely  reached  10,000  sabres, 
there  were  many  sick,  and  its  equipment  was  deficient ;  more¬ 
over,  he  was  opposed  to  the  Emperor’s  proposal  to  take  the 
offensive,  and  the  result  was  that  the  Bavarians  at  Simbach  and 


1743]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  I 


135 


elsewhere  found  themselves  exposed  to  the  Austrian  attack. 
Simultaneous  attacks  from  North  and  East  cut  off  the  Simbach 
detachment ;  on  May  9th  it  had  to  surrender,  a  few  fugitives 
alone  escaping  to  Braunau  out  of  a  force  of  over  6000.  As 
the  Austrians  pushed  on  West  the  French  recoiled  across  the 
Isar.  A  garrison  which  they  left  in  Dingolfing  was  attacked  and 
expelled  by  Daun  (May  17th),  and  before  the  advance  of  the 
Austrians  down  the  Isar  Landau  was  evacuated.  Crossing  to 
the  Northern  bank  of  the  Danube,  Charles  of  Lorraine  carried 
Deggendorf  by  storm,  having  first  thrust  three  battalions  in 
between  the  garrison  and  their  bridge  and  so  intercepted  their 
retreat.  Lobkowitz  was  now  moving  on  the  Danube  from  the 
Upper  Palatinate,  and  to  his  attention  Charles  left  the  French, 
recrossing  the  river  to  deal  with  the  Bavarians  (June  6th).  They 
proved  unable  to  make  a  stand,  but  retired  to  Ingolstadt  and 
thus  exposed  Munich  which  surrendered  to  Barenklau,  June  9th. 

By  this  time  de  Broglie  had  abandoned  all  idea  of  defend¬ 
ing  Bavaria,  and  he  now  (June  7th)  proposed  an  immediate 
retreat  to  join  de  Noailles,  who  was  holding  King  George  and 
the  Pragmatic  Army  in  check  on  the  Main.  It  may  fairly  be 
surmised  that  this  plan  was  not  unconnected  with  Maurice  de 
Saxe,  for  it  certainly  offered  the  best  course  of  action  under 
the  circumstances;  and  despite  despatches  from  France  which 
ordered  de  Broglie  to  hold  on  to  Ingolstadt,  the  Emperor’s 
entreaties  and  the  arrival  of  some  1 5,000  reinforcements, 
de  Broglie  steadily  refused  to  resume  the  offensive,  retiring  on 
June  23rd  to  Donauwerth  and  declaring  he  would  retreat  to 
the  Rhine.  On  the  26th  a  despatch  of  June  22nd  arrived 
authorising  a  retreat  but  not  a  move  to  join  de  Noailles,  never¬ 
theless  it  was  towards  the  Main  that  de  Broglie  moved.  Had 
de  Noailles  waited  for  him,  the  extra  numbers  might  have 
turned  the  scale  at  Dettingen  and  victory  would  have  condoned 
disobedience,  but  the  day  after  de  Broglie  left  Donauwerth, 
Noailles  gave  battle  and  was  beaten  (June  16th  to  27th).  On 
hearing  of  this  de  Broglie  moved  straight  to  the  Rhine ;  before 
the  end  of  July  he  regained  the  left  bank  near  Spires.  His 
action  was  typical  of  the  French  disgust  for  the  German 
campaign  ;  the  regiments  ordered  thither  had  nearly  mutinied 
when  they  heard  their  destination,  and  as  an  English  envoy 
wrote,1  “  the  discourse  among  the  French  at  Frankfort  is, 
1  Montagu  House  MSS.  (Hist.  MSS.  Com.)  p.  404. 


136  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1743 


‘  What  business  have  we  here  ?  ’ — they  are  very  sick  of 
Germany.” 

Left  in  the  lurch  by  de  Broglie,  Charles  Albert  fled  to 
Augsburg,  while  Seckendorff,  who  with  the  relics  of  the 
Bavarian  army  was  at  Rain,  began  negotiations  with  the 
Austrians,  which  resulted  in  the  Convention  of  Niederschonfeld 
(end  of  June).  This  allowed  him  and  his  army  to  retire  into 
Franconia  and  become  neutral.  Braunau,  though  defended 
by  4000  men,  had  already  fallen.  Ingolstadt  held  out  stub¬ 
bornly,  but  was  at  last  forced  to  capitulate  to  Barenklau  on 
September  30th,  Eger  having  surrendered  three  weeks  earlier. 

The  force  upon  the  Main,  which  de  Broglie  had  proposed 
to  join,  was  an  army  which  had  been  collected  on  the  Moselle 
earlier  in  the  year  to  prevent  the  march  of  the  so-called 
“  Pragmatic  Army”  up  the  Rhine  from  intercepting  de  Broglie’s 
retreat.  One  of  the  first-fruits  of  the  fall  of  Walpole  had  been 
the  more  active  part  which  England  now  prepared  to  play 
in  the  Continental  War.  In  April  1742,  British  troops  had 
begun  to  cross  to  Belgium,  and  by  the  middle  of  summer 
some  16,000  men1  had  been  collected  there  under  Lord  Stair. 
This  was  not  a  very  imposing  force,  but  it  was  all  that,  thanks 
to  Walpole’s  unwise  economy,  the  country  had  at  her  disposal. 
Walpole  had  not  merely  neglected  and  starved  the  Army,2 
but  he  had  not  even  attempted  to  remedy  this  weakness 
by  hiring  the  mercenaries  who  formed  the  staple  commercial 
product  of  so  many  of  the  minor  states  of  Germany.  Stair, 
a  veteran  of  Marlborough’s  wars,  united  diplomatic  with  his 
military  functions.  The  policy  he  favoured  may  be  described 
as  that  of  the  “  Grand  Alliance.”  Maria  Theresa  must 
devote  her  whole  resources  to  the  expulsion  of  the  French 
from  Germany,  and  to  following  up  their  retreat  by  an  invasion 
of  France :  in  this  Stair  proposed  to  co-operate  from  the 
Netherlands.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  this  policy  involved 
the  abandonment  of  Silesia  to  Prussia,  and  when  Maria 
Theresa  at  last  gave  way  and  signed  the  Preliminaries  of 
Breslau,  Stair’s  opportunity  seemed  to  have  come.  The 
perilous  position  of  the  French  in  Bohemia  called  off  Maillebois, 

1  4  troops  of  Household  Cavalry,  8  regiments  of  Horse  and  Dragoons,  3  battalions 
of  the  Guards,  and  12  of  the  Line. 

2  Cf.  J.  W.  Fortescue,  History  of  the  British  Army ,  vol.  ii.  bk.  vii. ,  especially 
chs.  i.  and  ii. 


1743]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  I 


137 


hitherto  equally  favourably  placed  for  a  blow  at  the  Nether¬ 
lands  or  at  Hanover,  into  the  interior  of  Germany  and  seemed 
to  lay  the  thinly  guarded  North-Eastern  frontier  of  France 
open  for  a  blow  down  the  Oise  on  Paris.  Had  the  Hanoverian 
army  at  once  hastened  to  join  Stair,  who  had  14,000  Austrians 
as  well  as  his  16,000  British,  there  was  practically  nothing 
between  him  and  Paris  but  a  corps  of  some  12,000  men  at 
Dunkirk.  The  plan,  if  daring,  was  sound  enough  in  idea ; 
for  even  if  Stair  had  failed  to  take  Paris,  he  might  have  fallen 
back  into  Normandy  and  re-established  communications  with 
England  by  sea.  But  George  II  hung  back :  he  developed 
scruples,  he  was  not  at  war  with  Louis  XV,  he  was  only  the 
ally  of  the  Queen  of  Hungary  and  Louis  the  ally  of  the 
Elector  of  Bavaria,  and  thus  a  fine  chance  was  allowed  to 
escape. 

For  1743  the  Austrians  were  anxious  to  bring  the 
Pragmatic  Army  into  Germany,  hoping  in  this  way  to  bring 
pressure  to  bear  on  the  minor  Powers  and  influence  them  in 
favour  of  Austria,  even  if  France  were  not  thereby  induced  to 
come  to  terms.1  George  II  was  well  disposed  to  this  plan, 
and  about  the  middle  of  February  the  British  troops  began 
their  move  Eastward  to  the  Rhine  and  then  South  up  that 
river.2  On  the  way  16,000  Hanoverians  joined  them;  on 
the  Main,  which  Stair  reached  early  in  May,  they  were 
overtaken  by  12,000  Austrians  from  the  Netherlands,  whose 
places  in  the  fortresses  had  been  taken  by  Hessians  in  British 
pay.  The  march  had  frightened  Frederick  of  Prussia,  he 
protested  vehemently  against  the  English  entering  the 
Empire  ;  but  his  threats  to  intervene  do  not  seem  to  have 
received  much  attention  or  to  have  checked  the  advance  for 
a  moment 

On  the  Main,  however,  a  halt  was  called,  much  to  the 
disgust  of  Stair,  who  was  anxious  to  repeat  1704  by  pushing 
forward  to  the  Upper  Danube  to  make  sure  of  intercepting 
de  Broglie’s  retreat.  But  this  move  was  too  daring  for 
George  II,  and  the  halt  gave  France  time  to  collect  an  army  of 
some  70,000  men  under  de  Noailles,  which  crossed  the  Rhine 

1  Cf.  Trevor  MSS.  p.  85. 

3  The  march  is  described  in  great  detail  by  Colonel  Charles  Russell  of  the 
1st  Guards  in  the  Checquers  Court  MSS.  (Hist.  MSS.  Com.),  from  which  source 
much  information  as  to  the  whole  campaign  may  be  obtained. 


138  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1743 


near  Worms  unopposed  (May  25th),  for  George  would  not 
let  Stair  cross  to  the  South  of  the  Main.  Segur  was  first 
pushed  forward  to  reinforce  de  Broglie,  and  then  de  Noailles 
took  post  to  oppose  the  further  advance  of  the  Pragmatic 
Army.1 

The  refusal  of  George  II  to  allow  Stair  to  retain  any  of 
the  posts  he  had  occupied  South  of  the  Main  soon  made  its 
bad  effects  felt.  It  left  the  whole  of  the  left  bank  free  to  the 
French  foragers,  and  they  also  crossed  to  the  right  bank  and 
drew  supplies  from  that  side.  Straitened  for  supplies,  the 
Pragmatic  Army  pushed  up  the  Main  to  Aschaffenburg  and 
just  forestalled  the  French  in  the  occupation  of  the  passage 
there  (June  7th  to  1  8th).  Two  days  later  the  King  joined  the 
army,  which,  through  no  fault  of  Stair’s,  began  to  find  itself 
in  great  straits  for  food.  The  French  barred  the  route  to 
Bavaria  higher  up  the  river,  and  their  foragers  plundered  the 
North  bank  freely  between  Aschaffenburg  and  Frankfurt. 
The  only  alternative  to  starvation  was  a  retreat  on  the 
magazines  at  Hanau,  where  George  hoped  to  be  joined  by 
6000  Hessians  in  British  pay  and  6000  “  Electoral  ” 

Hanoverians.2 

The  French  commander  saw  his  chance ;  five  brigades 
crossed  at  Aschaffenburg  to  press  on  the  rear  of  the  Allies, 
Militia  battalions  and  batteries  of  guns  lined  the  Southern 
bank  of  the  river,  while  23,000  of  his  best  troops  under  his 
nephew  de  Grammont  took  post  on  the  Northern  bank  to  bar 
the  retreat.  De  Grammont’s  position  was  behind  the  little 
Beck  which  flows  into  the  Main  just  East  of  Dettingen,  while 
the  wooded  hills  at  whose  foot  the  river  runs  seemed  an 
effective  obstacle  to  an  escape  Northward.  Indeed  the 
Allies  were  in  a  very  perilous  position.  Raked  by  the 
batteries  which  inflicted  heavy  loss  on  their  columns,3  they 
had  halted  and  front-faced  to  the  South  near  Klein  Ostheim, 
when  de  Grammont’s  corps  was  detected  at  Dettingen.  Stair 
appears  now  to  have  intervened,  and  under  cover  of  the  cavalry 

1  De  Noailles’  army  was  of  very  mixed  quality  ;  it  included  the  Maison  du  Roi  and 
some  regiments  which  had  been  in  garrisons  in  the  South  and  West,  but  the  bulk  of  it 
consisted  of  the  units  which  had  escaped  from  Prague  hastily  reformed  with  Militia 
recruits  of  poor  quality. 

2  i.e.  in  his  pay  as  Elector. 

3  The  bulk  of  the  losses  of  the  Austrians  and  Hanoverians  were  incurred  in 
this  way. 


1743]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  I 


139 


of  the  right  wing  (British  and  Austrian)  a  new  front 
was  formed  facing  de  Grammont.  On  the  right  next  the 
hills  were  four  cavalry  regiments,  then  an  Austrian  infantry 
brigade,  then  seven  British  battalions  with  another  cavalry 
regiment  next  the  river.  A  second  line  of  five  cavalry 
regiments  and  nine  battalions,  five  British,  four  Hanoverian, 
was  drawn  up  in  rear.  Farther  away  to  the  right  rear  the 
British  Guards  were  posted  on  a  height  which  covered  a  path 
over  the  wooded  hills  Northward.  Probably  because  he  saw 
this  move  of  the  Guards  and  concluded  that  the  force  in  front 
of  him  was  a  rearguard  seeking  to  cover  a  retreat,  partly  also 
because  his  men  were  being  galled  by  Stair’s  guns,  de 
Grammont  suddenly  anticipated  attack  by  moving  forward 
and  crossing  the  Beck,  a  step  which  threw  his  troops  into 
some  disorder.  The  Allies  also  advanced,  and  a  sharp  fire- 
fight  between  the  opposing  infantries  saw  the  French  centre 
recoiling  in  disorder,  when  their  cavalry,  coming  up  on  the 
right,  fell  upon  the  exposed  flank  of  the  British  infantry  near 
the  river,  where  only  a  weak  regiment  of  dragoons  1  covered 
it.  For  a  time  they  were  successful,  but  the  steadiness 
and  heavy  volleys  of  the  British  infantry  checked  them, 
and  the  British  and  Austrian  cavalry  from  the  other  wing 
came  up  to  the  rescue.  The  first  few  regiments  behaved 
none  too  well  and  were  routed,  but  the  arrival  of  reinforce¬ 
ments  turned  the  scale;  the  Maison ,  beaten  off  by  the 
infantry,  gave  way  before  a  charge  by  the  4th  and  6th 
Dragoons  and  two  Austrian  regiments.  This  allowed  the 
Allies’  infantry  to  advance  against  the  second  line  of  French 
foot,  “  in  high  spirits  at  having  repulsed  the  French  cavalry.” 
There  was  a  sharp  fight,  but  the  murderous  volleys  of  the 
British  infantry — Marshal  Neipperg  “  never  saw  such  a  firing  ” 
— were  too  much  for  the  French.  They  were  falling  back  in 
complete  disorder,  flocking  down  to  the  bridges,  and  Stair 
seemed  on  the  point  of  annihilating  de  Grammont’s  broken 
corps  when  George  II  intervened  to  stop  pursuit.  His  inter¬ 
vention  was  attributed  by  the  British  army  to  Hanoverian 
influence,2  for  Stair  certainly  seems  to  have  strongly  urged 

1  Bland’s,  now  3rd  Hussars. 

2  “  Nothing  but  a  Hanoverian  was  listened  to  or  regarded”  (Colonel  Russell). 
“The  King  halted,  and  the  scene  of  action  and  military  ardour  was  at  once  turned 
into  a  Court  circle”  (Colonel  C.  V.  Townshend’s  Memoirs  of  Marquess  Townshend , 


HO  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1743 


a  pursuit,  and  to  have  protested  against  the  undue  haste  with 
which  George  pressed  on  to  Hanau,  leaving  his  wounded  on 
the  field  to  the  care  of  de  Noailles.  Here  he  found  the 
12,000  Hessians  and  Hanoverians,  but  even  so  remained 
utterly  inactive ;  and  only  when  Charles  of  Lorraine  came  up 
to  Cannstadt  (July  9th)  and  Durlach  (25th)  did  de  Noailles 
retire  behind  the  Rhine,  crossing  at  Turckheim  (July  17th)  and 
occupying  the  Lauterburg  lines.1 

The  failure  to  utilise  the  victory  was  almost  as  discreditable 
to  George  II  as  were  the  blunders  which  had  made  the 
Pragmatic  Army  fight  at  such  a  disadvantage.  When  at 
length  Charles  of  Lorraine  arrived  much  time  was  wasted 
over  concerting  a  plan  of  operations,  for  Charles  did  not  wish 
to  be  second  in  command,  and  therefore  objected  to  George’s 
proposals  for  a  junction.  Finally,  the  Pragmatic  Army  crossed 
the  Rhine  above  Mayence  (Aug.  24th)  and  moved  to 
Worms  (29th),  de  Noailles  retiring  to  Landau.  A  little 
more  vigour  and  a  decisive  success  might  have  been  gained: 
the  French  were  intimidated,  and  reinforcements,  including  a 
Dutch  contingent  and  four  British  regiments,  had  come  up  by 
way  of  Treves,  but  the  Pragmatic  Army  remained  inactive  at 
Worms  till  September  24th,  while  the  Austrians  seeking 
to  force  a  passage  over  the  Rhine  near  New  Breisach  were 
beaten  off  (Sept.  3rd).  Early  in  October  the  Allies  dis¬ 
persed,  the  Pragmatic  Army  returning  to  the  Netherlands, 
the  Dutch,  the  “  Electoral  ”  Hanoverians  and  the  Hessians  to 
their  respective  homes,  the  Austrians  taking  up  winter-quarters 
in  the  Vorderland.  If  the  campaign  had  not  proved  quite 
as  brilliant  a  success  as  better  handling  of  the  Pragmatic 
Army  might  have  made  it,  the  Allies  had  reason  to  be  fairly 
satisfied.  The  French  had  been  expelled  from  Germany, 
and  it  seemed  as  though  the  next  year  might  see  the  tables 
turned  and  Alsace  and  Lorraine  invaded. 

To  some  extent  diplomatic  considerations  may  account 

p.  29) ;  the  Guards  bitterly  resented  being  put  under  the  Hanoverian  General  von 
Ilten,  whom  they  called  “the  confectioner  of  the  Household  Brigade — because  he 
preserves  them.” 

1  The  losses  at  Dettingen  were  heavy  on  both  sides ;  the  Allies  had  about  750 
killed,  1600  wounded — 800  being  British,  550  Hanoverians,  1000  Austrians:  the 
estimates  of  the  French  loss  vary  from  17,000  to  8000,  of  which  the  more  moderate 
(cf.  Trevor  and  Montagu  House  MSS. )  seems  more  reasonable,  though  many  were 
drowned  in  the  Main. 


1743]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  I 


141 

for  the  sluggishness  of  the  Pragmatic  Army  after  Dettingen, 
though  George  Il’s  want  of  strategic  capacity  and  his  failure 
to  work  harmoniously  with  Charles  of  Lorraine  were  more 
immediately  important.  The  truth  was  that  George  II  and 
Carteret  did  not  see  eye  to  eye  with  Maria  Theresa.  Looking 
to  the  humiliation  of  France  rather  than  to  the  satisfaction 
of  Maria  Theresa  as  the  principal  object,  they  put  pressure 
upon  her  to  strengthen  the  Coalition  by  concessions  to  Bavaria 
and  to  Sardinia  which  she  was  ill-disposed  to  make.  Thinking 
that  France  had  been  more  completely  beaten  than  was  really 
the  case,  Maria  Theresa  was  now  determined  to  recover  her 
husband’s  family  land,  Lorraine ;  and  reluctant  as  she  was  to 
let  Charles  VII  off  so  lightly,  it  is  possible  that  she  would 
have  agreed  to  restore  Bavaria  to  him  and  to  recognise  him 
as  Emperor  had  Carteret  been  able  to  procure  from  the 
English  Parliament  the  subsidies  which  he  demanded  as  the 
price  of  his  adhesion  to  the  Coalition.  But  Carteret  had 
little  influence  in  Parliament  and  could  not  command  sub¬ 
sidies  :  the  old  cry  was  raised  that  he  was  sacrificing  England’s 
maritime  and  colonial  interests  to  Hanover,  and  Parliament 
was  reluctant  to  support  one  so  recently  the  client  of  France 
as  Charles  vil.  Thus  the  “  Project  of  Hanau  ”  resulted  in 
failure,  and  Carteret  found  himself  compelled  to  give  way. 
His  policy  was  really  one  of  using  the  King’s  Hanoverian 
predilections  to  assist  his  own  European  policy,  a  policy  of 
“  conquering  America  in  Germany  ”  which  one  of  his  bitterest 
assailants  was  one  day  to  carry  out  triumphantly ;  but  he  had 
no  party  behind  him,  and  could  not  combat  the  “  Revolution 
Families”  with  success.  In  one  quarter,  however,  he  did 
succeed  in  gaining  his  ends,  and  the  Treaty  of  Worms,  signed 
September  13th,  did  bind  the  slippery  Charles  Emmanuel 
of  Sardinia  to  the  Allied  cause. 

If  the  course  of  events  in  Italy  does  not  concern  the 
history  of  Germany  as  closely  as  do  the  campaigns  on  the 
Elbe,  the  Oder,  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube,  it  forms  too 
important  a  part  of  the  Austrian  Succession  War  to  be 
passed  over  hastily.  The  keynote  to  its  varied  fortunes  is 
to  be  found  in  the  double  relations  of  Sardinia  to  Austria  and 
to  the  House  of  Bourbon.  Charles  Emmanuel,  the  able 
and  unscrupulous  ruler  of  “  the  Prussia  of  Italy,”  and  his 
minister,  d’Ormea,  while  determined  to  reap  all  the  advantage 


142  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1741-2 


they  could  out  of  Maria  Theresa’s  embarrassment,  viewed 
with  great  hostility  Elizabeth  Farnese’s  schemes  for  her  second 
son  Don  Philip.  Lombardy,  which  she  proposed  to  conquer 
for  him,  was  the  last  place  in  which  the  Sardinians  could  with 
equanimity  see  Bourbons  established.  The  instinct  for  holding 
the  balance  between  the  rivals  drove  Charles  Emmanuel  over 
to  the  side  of  Austria  as  being  the  weaker,  and  though  he 
negotiated  simultaneously  with  both  parties,  it  was  with 
Austria  that  he  came  to  terms  in  February  1742.  This 
treaty,  arranged  by  English  mediation,  was  of  a  provisional 
nature.  .Charles  Emmanuel  was  to  support  Maria  Theresa, 
while  the  thorny  question  of  concessions  was  to  be  settled 
later.1 

It  was  fortunate  for  Maria  Theresa  that  she  thus  obtained 
the  help  of  Sardinia,  for  she  needed  it  badly.  Escorted  by 
the  French  Toulon  fleet,  whose  superiority  in  force  had 
deterred  the  English  Mediterranean  squadron  under  Haddock 
from  attempting  to  dispute  their  passage,  15,000  Spaniards 
from  Barcelona  had  landed  at  Orbitello  in  December  1741. 
Had  the  Neapolitans  joined*  them  at  once  Traun,  who  had 
had  to  detach  most  of  his  troops  from  Milan  to  save 
Vienna,2  would  have  had  a  difficult  task ;  as  it  was,  their 
delays  saved  him.  By  the  time  that  the  Spaniards  and 
Neapolitans  united  at  Pesaro  (Feb.  1742)  the  arrangement 
with  Sardinia  had  been  concluded  and  some  reinforcements 
had  returned  from  Austria.  With  12,000  Austrians3  and 
some  20,000  Sardinians,  Traun  took  the  offensive,  invaded  the 
territory  of  Modena,  whose  Duke  (Francis  III  of  Este)  had 
just  declared  for  the  Bourbons,  besieged  and  took  (June  28th) 
that  town,  and  generally  displayed  so  bold  a  front  that  the 
Spanish  commander  Montemar  fell  back  to  Foligno.  Here 
the  Neapolitans  left  him,  recalled  home  by  the  demonstration 

1  Charles  Emmanuel  demanded  the  Ticino  as  his  Eastern  boundary  with  Stradella 
and  Finale  :  this  last  district  had  been  sold  to  Genoa  by  Charles  VI  and  Maria 
Theresa  indignantly  refused  to  rob  Genoa  by  cancelling  the  sale.  Its  importance  lay 
in  giving  the  continental  dominions  of  Sardinia  direct  access  to  the  sea.  It  was 
Spain’s  refusal  to  let  Charles  Emmanuel  have  all  Lombardy,  a  demand  to  which 
France  was  favourable,  which  caused  the  breaking  off  of  the  negotiations. 

2  Cf.  p.  127. 

3  The  Austrians  relied  entirely  on  German  and  Hungarian  troops  in  Italy,  they 
did  not  even  hire  Swiss  mercenaries ;  and  though  their  government  was  by  no  means 
unpopular  and  hatred  of  Sardinia  would  certainly  have  secured  the  fidelity  of  a 
Milanese  militia,  they  had  not  raised  any  local  troops. 


i743]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  I 


143 


of  Commodore  Martin’s  English  squadron  off  Naples  (Aug. 
2  2nd),  which  had  forced  Don  Carlos  to  retire  from  the 
Coalition.  Traun  was,  however,  prevented  from  overthrowing 
Montemar  by  the  return  home  of  the  Sardinians.  A  Spanish 
force  under  Don  Philip  passing  overland  through  France,  for 
the  English  fleet  under  Matthews  had  severed  communications 
by  sea  between  Spain  and  Italy,  was  threatening  Piedmont.  It 
was  repulsed  (Sept.),  but  it  brought  Traun  to  a  standstill. 

Hoping  to  take  advantage  of  this  diversion,  Elizabeth 
Farnese  now  directed  Gages,  who  had  replaced  Montemar, 
to  try  a  winter-campaign.  Moving  against  Finale,  however, 
he  was  checked  by  Traun  at  Buonoporto,  and  fell  back  to 
Campo  Santo  on  the  Panaro.  Here  on  the  afternoon  of 
February  8th,  1743,  Traun  attacked  Gages,  and  by  skilful 
handling  of  his  reserves  at  a  critical  moment  won  a  handsome 
victory.  But  various  causes  prevented  him  from  making  full 
use  of  his  success.  He  was  in  disfavour  at  Vienna,  being 
accused  of  maladministration  of  the  Italian  provinces  and  of 
wasteful  expenditure.  Therefore,  expecting  to  be  recalled, 
he  took  no  steps  towards  pushing  home  his  advantage. 
Charles  Emmanuel  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  would 
be  well  to  come  to  a  definite  settlement  as  to  the  concessions 
he  was  to  receive  before  Austria  gained  any  further  success, 
and  the  war  languished,  the  only  quarter  in  which  much 
activity  was  displayed  being  at  sea. 

The  negotiations  about  the  concessions  were  long  and 
complicated.  Maria  Theresa  at  last  agreed  to  the  demands 
of  Sardinia,  but  sought  to  make  them  conditional  on  her 
recovering  Silesia.  Charles  Emmanuel  would  not  hear  of 
anything  but  an  immediate  cession,  and  England  objected  to 
the  reopening  of  the  Silesian  question,  still  hoping  to  bring 
Frederick  into  line  with  herself  and  Austria  against  France. 
In  the  end  a  threat  that,  if  she  did  not  yield,  Charles 
Emmanuel  would  come  to  terms  with  France,  extorted  from 
Maria  Theresa  a  reluctant  consent  to  the  Treaty  of  Worms 
(September  13th,  1743).  By  this  she  ceded  to  Sardinia 
Parma,  Piacenza  and  the  districts  of  Anghiara  and  Vigevano, 
the  last  strips  of  Austrian  territory  West  of  the  Ticino. 
Charles  Emmanuel  abandoned  all  claims  on  the  Milanese, 
but  received  the  reversion  of  Austria’s  rights  over  Finale.  It 
was  agreed  that  the  Bourbons  should  be  expelled  from  Italy; 


144  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1743 


to  this  end  Maria  Theresa  was  to  provide  30,000  men  and 
to  receive  Naples  and  the  Tuscan  ports,  Charles  Emmanuel’s 
40,000  men  were  to  win  him  back  Sicily.  England  undertook 
to  provide  subsidies  and  the  assistance  of  her  fleet. 

It  is  certainly  open  to  question  whether  Maria  Theresa 
was  well  advised  in  concluding  this  treaty.  It  was  a  direct 
challenge  to  France  and  Spain  and,  while  France  was  heartily 
tired  of  the  war  in  Germany,  the  threat  of  an  Austrian  invasion 
of  Alsace,  the  danger  of  losing  the  acquisitions  of  1738  and 
the  wish  to  wipe  out  the  humiliations  of  Belleisle’s  failure 
by  victories  in  the  Netherlands  combined  to  arouse  warlike 
enthusiasm  and  violent  anti- Austrian  feeling  in  France.  To 
have  taken  the  head  of  a  German  crusade  to  recover  Alsace 
and  Lorraine  would  have  been  a  policy  worthy  of  the  best 
traditions  of  the  Hapsburg  House ;  but  for  such  a  policy 
England  and  Sardinia  would  have  cared  but  little,  and  to 
organise  a  German  league  against  France  with  the  titular 
head  of  Germany  a  fugitive  under  French  protection  and  the 
strong  military  power  of  Prussia  indifferent  if  not  actively 
hostile  was  impossible.  It  would  certainly  appear  that  Maria 
Theresa  would  have  done  well  to  have  come  to  terms  with 
France,  to  have  acknowledged  Charles  VII  as  Emperor,  and 
thus  to  have  isolated  Frederick.  She  could  have  counted  on 
Hanoverian  hostility  to  Prussia  and  the  needs  of  the  maritime 
and  colonial  war  to  keep  England  neutral,  she  might  have 
even  won  the  assistance  of  the  Bourbons  by  some  such 
concession  as  the  cession  of  Tuscany  to  Louis  xv’s  son-in-law 
Don  Philip,  she  would  have  been  better  able  to  resist  Sardinia’s 
demands  for  concessions.  France  had  no  immediate  object 
in  continuing  the  war  save  the  restoration  of  her  military 
prestige.  The  attempt  to  partition  the  Hapsburg  dominions 
had  failed,  and  it  is  not  a  little  difficult  to  see  why  the  war 
should  have  gone  on. 

An  explanation  is  perhaps  to  be  found  in  the  continued 
presence  of  Frederick  II  in  Silesia.  This  was  the  real 
obstacle  to  peace  on  the  Continent.  Until  she  had  recovered 
that  province  or  obtained  some  territorial  compensation  for 
its  loss,  Maria  Theresa  would  not  rest  content.  But  where 
was  such  compensation  to  be  obtained  ?  Bavaria  seemed  the 
most  attractive  alternative,  but  France  could  not  look  on  and 
see  her  Imperial  client  deprived  of  his  hereditary  dominions, 


1 743] 


THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  I  145 


and  such  a  solution  would  have  aroused  Prussia’s  fears  and 
opposition.  To  win  Lorraine  or  Naples  and  Sicily  from  the 
Bourbons  and  compensate  the  Elector  of  Bavaria  by  an 
exchange  might  have  been  more  generally  acceptable,  but 
this  scheme  involved  their  conquest,  which  was  sure  to  be  no 
easy  task.  The  deciding  factor  in  the  situation  was  Maria 
Theresa’s  poverty :  she  could  do  nothing  without  English 
subsidies,  and  she  therefore  had  to  fall  in  with  the  policy 
agreeable  to  England.  And  while  England  under  Carteret’s 
guidance  was  seeking  to  revive  the  Continental  coalition 
against  the  Bourbons  as  the  best  means  of  combating  their 
ascendency,  the  reaction  had  already  begun  in  France,  and  the 
trend  of  feeling  in  favour  of  an  active  prosecution  of  the  war 
was  marked  by  the  conclusion,  on  October  25th,  1743,  of 
the  Treaty  of  Fontainebleau,  the  Bourbon  counterblast  to  the 
Treaty  of  Worms.  By  this  famous  treaty,  the  second  of  the 
so-called  “  Family  Compacts,”  France  recognised  the  rights 
of  Don  Philip  to  the  Milanese,  Parma  and  Piacenza.  She 
also  undertook  to  help  Spain  to  recover  Gibraltar  and  Minorca 
from  England,  and  promised  to  definitely  declare  war  on 
Austria  and  England. 


ic 


148  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1744 


Prince  Charles  of  Lorraine,  though  somewhat  late  in  beginning 
operations,  seemed  in  a  fair  way  to  possess  themselves  of 
Alsace.  They  had  forced  a  passage  at  Germersheim  on  the 
last  day  of  June,  the  Bavarian  corps  posted  there,  the  relics  of 
the  army  of  the  Emperor,  being  somewhat  negligent,  and 
Marshal  Coigni,  who  lay  to  the  North,  having  his  attention 
diverted  by  a  corps  which  crossed  the  river  at  Mayence,  thanks 
to  the  Elector’s  connivance.  Advancing  to  Lauterburg  and 
Weissenburg,  the  Austrians  took  these  posts  and  all  but  cut 
Coigni  off  from  Alsace.  He  managed  to  retake  Weissenburg 
and  so  push  through  to  his  province,  but  he  was  driven  back 
to  Haguenau  and  thence  to  Strassburg,  and  the  route  over 
the  Vosges  into  Lorraine  was  left  open.  It  was  this  critical 
situation  which  brought  the  King  and  de  Noailles  with 
25,000  men  from  Flanders  up  to  Metz  at  full  speed.  At 
Metz  their  progress  was  checked  by  the  sudden  illness  of 
Louis,  whose  death  was  hourly  expected  (Aug.).  Uncertain 
whether  he  would  be  in  favour  with  the  Dauphin,  de  Noailles 
betrayed  a  hesitation  and  indecision  in  his  conduct  of  military 
affairs  which  might  have  proved  serious  had  the  Austrians 
displayed  greater  activity.  Not  till  the  King  was  out  of 
danger  did  de  Noailles  advance,  enter  Alsace  by  way  of 
Wilier  and  join  Coigni  near  Strassburg  (Aug.  17th).  A 
week  later  he  had  the  pleasure  of  “  assisting  ”  at  the  repassage 
of  the  Rhine  at  Beinheim  by  the  Austrians,  an  operation  he 
altogether  failed  to  hinder  or  harass,  for  the  feeble  attack 
which  he  did  deliver  upon  their  rearguard  was  easily  beaten 
off  and  the  difficult  undertaking  was  accomplished  in  good 
order,  a  matter  not  a  little  creditable  to  Prince  Charles  and  his 
chief  adviser  Marshal  Traun. 

But  it  was  not  the  arrival  of  de  Noailles  on  the  scene 
which  was  primarily  responsible  for  the  Austrian  evacuation  of 
Alsace.  The  credit  for  having  ruined  the  best  chance  the 
eighteenth  century  was  to  see  of  reuniting  that  province  to  the 
Empire  is  due  to  Frederick  II.  His  fear  that  he  might  be 
disturbed  in  his  possession  of  Silesia  outweighed  with  him  the 
natural  satisfaction  which  every  patriotic  German  should  have 
felt  at  the  prospect  of  seeing  Alsace  recovered  from  the 
Bourbons.  Where  Frederick  William  1  or  even  the  Great 
Elector  would  probably  have  welcomed  the  chance  of  wreaking 
the  Empire’s  vengeance  on  its  most  formidable  enemy, 


1744]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II 


149 

Frederick  II  preferred  to  deal  Austria  yet  one  more  stab  in  the 
back  for  the  benefit  of  Louis  XV. 

That  it  would  not  be  to  his  advantage  if  the  Emperor 
were  driven  out  of  Germany  and  compelled  to  take  refuge  in 
France,  Frederick  was  well  aware.  As  early  as  the  spring  of 
1743  he  had  been  contemplating  an  alliance  of  the  neutral 
Powers  of  Germany  to  bring  about  peace  on  terms  favourable 
to  the  Emperor  rather  than  to  Maria  Theresa,  but  he  had 
preferred  remaining  in  quiet  possession  of  Silesia  to  risking 
anything  for  his  nominal  overlord.  Since  then  many  things 
had  occurred  which  had  awakened  his  suspicions.  The  Treaty 
of  Berlin  had  not  been  in  the  list  of  treaties  guaranteed  at 
Worms ;  a  treaty  had  been  concluded  between  Austria  and 
Saxony  guaranteeing  without  specification  all  the  possessions 
of  Austria ;  it  seemed  possible  that  the  hopelessness  of  his 
situation  might  induce  Charles  VII  to  come  to  terms  with 
Maria  Theresa  and  allow  her  to  incorporate  Bavaria  in  her 
dominions  on  giving  him  in  exchange  Alsace-Lorraine,  Naples 
or  the  Netherlands.  Frederick  would  have  had  no  objection 
to  seeing  Austria  take  Naples  for  herself,  but  Maria  Theresa, 
like  Joseph  II,  aimed  rather  at  re-establishing  Hapsburg 
predominance  in  Germany  than  at  fresh  acquisitions  else¬ 
where  ;  there  was  even  a  prospect  that  the  Electors — for  not 
only  Hanover,  but  Saxony  and  the  Ecclesiastical  Electors  were 
now  on  her  side — might  be  induced  by  Maria  Theresa  to  set 
aside  the  election  of  Charles  VII  as  invalid  and  to  choose 
Francis  Stephen  as  Emperor  in  his  place.  One  may  or  may 
not  believe  in  the  genuineness  of  Frederick’s  alarm  on  behalf 
of  the  German  constitution,  but  it  cannot  be  denied  that  he 
had  reason  to  tremble  for  Silesia ;  still  one  may  fairly  ask 
whether  Maria  Theresa  would  not  have  reconciled  herself  to 
the  loss  of  Silesia  and  have  acknowledged  Charles  VII  as 
Emperor  if  the  Union  of  Frankfurt  had  turned  the  scale 
against  France  and  enabled  her  to  wrest  Alsace  and  Lorraine 
from  the  heir  of  Louis  XIV  ? 

The  Union  of  Frankfurt  was  the  league  which  Frederick 
with  the  assistance  of  Chavigny,  the  French  envoy  at  Munich, 
organised  in  May  1  744.  It  included,  besides  Charles  VII,  the 
new  Elector  Palatine,  Charles  Theodore  of  Sulzbach,  who  had 
succeeded  to  all  the  possessions  of  the  Neuburg  line,  including 
Jiilich  and  Berg,  on  Charles  Philip’s  death  in  1742,  Landgrave 


ISO  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1744 


Frederick  I  of  Hesse-Cassel  and  other  Princes.  Its  objects 
were  to  restore  the  lawful  constitution  of  the  Empire,  and  to 
maintain  the  Emperor  in  his  rights ;  to  recover  for  Charles  VII 
his  hereditary  dominions,  and  on  this  basis  and  with  the 
guarantee  of  Silesia  to  Frederick  to  re-establish  peace  in 
Germany.  By  a  secret  article  France  guaranteed  this 
compact,  while  some  weeks  later  another  secret  treaty  with  the 
Emperor  promised  to  Prussia  large  concessions  in  Bohemia, 
and  to  France  fortresses  in  the  Netherlands. 

Good  relations  between  France  and  Prussia  had  not  been 
very  easy  to  restore.  With  good  cause  each  distrusted  the 
other’s  sincerity.  Voltaire’s  mission  to  Berlin  in  July  1743 
had  for  this  reason  proved  a  fiasco,  and  not  until  Frederick  saw 
France  thoroughly  committed  to  the  war,  both  formally  by 
having  declared  it  and  practically  by  having  invaded  Flanders, 
did  he  conclude  an  arrangement  with  Louis  xv’s  government 
(June  5th,  1744).  The  possible  hostility  of  Russia,  where 
there  was  a  strong  anti-Prussian  party  led  by  Bestuchev,  he 
had  already  to  some  extent  neutralised  by  arranging  for  the 
marriage  of  Sophia  of  Anhalt-Zerbst  (afterwards  Catherine  II) 
to  Duke  Peter,  the  heir  of  the  Czarina  Elizabeth.1 

The  first  result  of  this  alliance  was  that  on  August  15  th, 
eight  days  after  his  ultimatum  had  been  presented  at  Vienna, 
Frederick’s  troops  streamed  across  the  Saxon  frontier  on 
their  way  to  Bohemia,  and  on  September  2nd  united  before 
Prague  with  a  column  which  had  come  from  Silesia  through 
Glatz.  It  was  the  presence  of  Frederick’s  80,000  men  in 
Bohemia  which  brought  Charles  of  Lorraine  back  from  the 
Rhine  to  repel  this  new  attack.  Prague,  as  in  1741,  was 
weakly  held ;  but  it  resisted  for  a  fortnight,  falling  on 
September  16th,  after  which  Frederick  pushed  up  the 
Moldau  with  the  intention  of  intercepting  the  Austrian 
retreat  and  catching  them  between  his  army  and  the  Franco- 
Bavarians,  whom  he  somewhat  hastily  concluded  to  be 
following  hard  upon  their  tracks. 

This,  however,  was  not  the  case.  While  the  Austrians, 
marching  with  a  celerity  which  was  as  commendable  as  it 
was  unusual  on  their  part,  reached  Donauwerth  on  September 
I  oth  and  Waldmunchen  on  the  border  between  Bavaria  and 

1  He  was  grandson  of  Peter  the  Great,  being  the  son  of  his  daughter  Anne  and 
Duke  Charles  Frederick  of  Holstein-Gottorp. 


1744]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II 


15* 

Bohemia  a  fortnight  later,  de  Noailles  and  the  main  body  of 
the  French  had  turned  aside  to  besiege  Freiburg  in  Breisgau. 
This  was  a  move  it  is  impossible  to  justify:  they  had  given  no 
specific  pledge  to  Frederick,  but  common  sense  might  have 
shown  de  Noailles  that  it  would  be  well  to  co-operate  with  an 
ally  so  capable  of  lending  useful  help,  while  the  obvious 
strategy  was  to  press  hard  upon  the  Austrian  retreat  and 
bring  them  to  action.  The  siege  of  Freiburg,  which  was 
begun  on  September  1 8th.  had  no  definite  strategical  object, 
and  served  no  really  useful  purpose.  Probably  the  real  reason 
why  de  Noailles  forbore  to  send  more  than  twenty  battalions 
under  Segur  forward  into  Bavaria  with  Seckendorff  and  the 
Imperial  army,  was  that  he  did  not  wish  to  commit  himself  to 
a  repetition  of  the  fate  that  had  befallen  the  last  invasion  of 
Germany  ;  that  lively  recollections  of  their  experiences  in  those 
quarters  made  his  officers  and  men  loath  to  revisit  them,  and 
that  neither  de  Noailles  nor  the  French  government  felt 
inclined  to  risk  anything  to  the  chance  of  Frederick’s  sincerity 
in  co-operation. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  Frederick  found  that  his  move  South- 
Westward  had  brought  him  into  considerable  danger.  He 
had  to  recoil  hastily  from  Budweis  to  Frauenberg,  which  he 
reached  on  the  day  (Oct.  2nd)  that  Prince  Charles  and  Traun 
joined  Bathyanny  and  20,000  men  recalled  from  Bavaria  at 
Mirstitz.  This  compelled  Frederick  to  retire  precipitately 
behind  the  Sasawa,  for  his  communications  with  Prague  were 
threatened.  Once  more  Maria  Theresa  had  appealed  to  the 
Hungarians,  and  in  reply  clouds  of  their  light  horsemen  were 
rallying  to  the  Austrian  standard  and  were  making  their 
presence  felt  by  the  Prussians,  whose  stragglers  and  foragers 
and  outposts  they  harassed  with  great  persistence  and  success. 

Traun,  though  joined  by  a  Saxon  contingent  on  October 
22nd,  steadily  declined  to  be  brought  to  the  pitched  battle  by 
which  Frederick  hoped  to  extricate  himself  from  his  troubles. 
Not  even  the  most  careful  feints  would  tempt  him.  On 
November  4th,  Frederick  retired  to  Kolin,  the  Austrians 
moving  up  to  Kuttenberg.  Frederick  next  crossed  to  the 
North-East  of  the  Elbe,  intending  to  take  up  his  winter- 
quarters  behind  that  river ;  but  the  Austrians  suddenly 
became  active,  pushed  across  the  river  at  Teinetz,  and  so  cut 
him  off  from  Prague  (Nov.  19th).  The  King  had  no  alternative 


152  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1744 


but  to  retire  as  best  he  could  to  Silesia :  he  was  fortunate  in 
that  the  Austrians  did  not  move  quickly  enough  to  profit 
more  by  the  scattered  state  of  his  troops,  but  his  army  suffered 
much  and  lost  heavily  on  their  retreat.  The  garrison  of 
Prague  evacuated  the  town  and  also  made  their  way  to  Silesia 
after  a  disastrous  march.  Traun  followed  the  Prussians  into 
Upper  Silesia  early  in  the  New  Year,  but  the  bitter  weather 
made  a  winter  campaign  impossible,  and  he  withdrew  almost 
at  once  to  Bohemia.  He  had  the  satisfaction  of  having — as 
Frederick  himself  quite  admitted — altogether  out-manoeuvred 
the  King  of  Prussia,  but  he  had  perhaps  carried  caution  too 
far,  and  might  have  risked  a  battle  when  the  Prussians  had 
once  begun  to  be  demoralised  by  continually  retreating.  But 
a  price  had  to  be  paid  for  the  deliverance  of  Bohemia  from 
the  Prussians,  and  this  was  the  expulsion  of  Barenklau  from 
Bavaria.  With  only  20,000  men  to  oppose  the  32,000  of 
Seckendorff  and  Segur,  he  had  had  to  evacuate  Munich  (Oct. 
15th)  and  retire  behind  the  Inn,  retaining  possession,  how¬ 
ever,  of  Passau,  Salzburg  and  Braunau.  Freiburg  meanwhile 
after  a  gallant  defence  had  succumbed  to  the  French  on 
November  24th. 

Two  events  of  great  importance  marked  the  winter  of 
1744— 1745.  In  November  the  Marquis  d’Argenson  became 
Foreign  Minister  of  France.  On  January  20th  the  Emperor 
Charles  VII  died. 

The  foreign  policy  of  d’Argenson  presents  a  curious 
mixture  of  the  obsolete  and  the  premature.  In  his  idea  of 
establishing  in  Italy  an  independent  federation  under  the 
hegemony  of  Sardinia,  he  was  as  much  in  advance  of  his  times 
as  he  was  behind  them  in  thinking  the  humiliation  of  the 
Hapsburgs  the  chief  object  of  French  policy  towards  Germany. 
In  his  desire  to  accomplish  this  end,  to  put  in  practice  the 
policy  of  divide  et  impera ,  he  never  seems  to  have  stopped 
to  consider  whether  the  Prussian  alliance  might  not  prove  a 
two-edged  weapon.  Opposed  as  he  was  to  England  and 
anxious  to  revive  the  French  Marine,  he  failed  to  see  that  the 
hostility  of  Austria  and  Prussia  might  be  relied  upon  to 
paralyse  Germany  and  to  keep  her  neutral  in  the  Anglo- 
French  contest  for  the  seas  which  was  of  no  immediate 
concern  to  Hapsburg  or  Hohenzollern. 

The  death  of  Charles  VII  involved  the  collapse  of  the 


1745]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II 


153 


Union  of  Frankfurt,  and  opened  up  the  question  of  the  suc¬ 
cession  to  the  Empire.  Even  before  the  Emperor’s  death  the 
Franco-Bavarian  alliance  had  been  showing  signs  of  weakness. 
German  feeling  was  anti-French ;  the  Empress,  an  Austrian 
Archduchess,  favoured  a  reconciliation  with  Austria ;  and  the 
Emperor’s  best  general,  Seckendorff,  distrusting  the  prospects 
of  successfully  holding  Bavaria,  was  quite  ready  to  come 
to  terms.  So  averse  was  he  to  the  war,  that  when  in  January 
an  Austrian  division  attacked  the  French  posts  at  Amberg, 
he  refused  to  stir  to  its  aid.  Segur  attempted  the  relief,  but 
was  badly  beaten,  whereupon  the  town  capitulated.  Just 
about  this  time  a  refusal  to  comply  with  the  Emperor’s 
urgent  appeal  for  reinforcements  was  received  from  Louis  XV, 
and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  this  was  the  final  blow  to 
Charles  vn.  “  The  Bold  Bavarian,”  who  must  have  found 
the  Imperial  dignity  a  very  disappointing  possession,  was  only 
forty-eight  at  his  death  (Jan.  1745).  Led  away  by  a  not 
unnatural  ambition  and  by  the  promises  of  French  and 
Prussian  assistance,  he  had  embarked  upon  a  course  from 
which  he  had  reaped  no  advantage,  and  which  had  exposed 
his  unhappy  subjects  to  great  sufferings.  It  is  hardly  possible 
to  keep  pace  with  the  number  of  times  Bavaria  changed  hands. 
This  ill-fortune  was  a  warning  to  any  who  might  aspire  to  the 
Empire.  Charles  Albert  had  tried  to  gain  the  headship  of 
Germany  by  the  aid  of  Germany’s  old  enemy.  It  would  be 
hard  to  condemn  him  for  falseness  to  an  all  but  non-existent 
German  nationality  and  patriotism,  but  in  letting  himself  be 
the  puppet  of  France  and  his  candidature  be  the  cloak  for 
French  aggressions  on  Germany,  he  cannot  be  said  to  be  free 
from  responsibility  for  the  misfortunes  which  befell  him. 

The  death  of  Charles  VII  opened  up  to  Maria  Theresa  an 
opportunity  for  attaining  one  of  the  principal  objects  of  her 
ambition,  her  husband’s  election  as  Emperor.  Nor  was  it 
easy  to  see  where  a  candidate  could  be  found  to  oppose 
Francis  Stephen.  Maximilian  Joseph,  the  new  Elector  of 
Bavaria,  was  a  mere  youth  and,  even  had  he  been  willing  to 
subject  his  country  again  to  the  perilous  honour  of  having 
the  Emperor  for  its  ruler,  his  candidature  could  hardly  have 
had  any  chance.  As  Protestants,  if  for  no  other  reasons, 
George  of  Hanover  and  Frederick  of  Brandenburg  were  im¬ 
possible.  The  Elector  Palatine  was  on  personal  grounds  quite 


154  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1745 


out  of  the  question,  and  there  only  remained  Augustus  III  of 
Saxony,  who  had  recently  come  to  terms  with  Austria  and 
Russia,1  and  therefore  declined  the  offers  of  France  and 
Prussia.  Notwithstanding  this,  d’Argenson  continued  to 
hanker  after  the  idea  of  inducing  Augustus  III  to  stand ; 
and  he  urged  that  as  a  means  to  exercise  influence  over 
the  Imperial  election,  France  should  once  again  assume  the 
offensive  on  the  Danube  and  join  Frederick  in  Bohemia. 
This  would  entail  standing  on  the  defensive  in  the  Nether¬ 
lands,  which  he  regarded  as  quite  unimportant,  and  would 
prevent  France  lending  much  aid  to  the  Spanish  Bourbons  in 
Italy,  thereby  withdrawing  France  from  an  alliance  his  feelings 
towards  which  are  well  expressed  in  his  famous  aphorism,  “  le 
destin  de  l’Espagne  est  toujours  de  nous  ruiner.” 

But  meanwhile  Maria  Theresa,  acting  with  a  remarkable 
decision  and  promptitude,  had  hurled  a  strong  force  under 
Bathyanny  on  the  scattered  Franco-Bavarian  forces  in  Bavaria. 
He  crossed  the  Inn  on  March  21st,  took  Landshut,  Straubing 
and  Dingolfing  almost  unopposed,  drove  Segur  in  on  Donau- 
werth,  sent  the  Elector  flying  to  Augsburg,  and  in  a  fortnight 
the  unlucky  Bavaria  had  once  more  suffered  a  change  of  masters. 

The  Elector  had  no  alternative  but  to  accept  the  offers 
Maria  Theresa  now  made  through  her  cousin  the  Empress 
Dowager.  In  vain  Chavigny  fought  to  keep  Maximilian 
Joseph  true  to  an  ally  who  made  no  effort  to  succour  him. 
On  April  22nd,  1745,  the  Treaty  of  Ftissen  restored  him  to  his 
dominions  on  his  guaranteeing  the  Pragmatic  Sanction,  pro¬ 
mising  neutrality  in  the  war,2  and  pledging  his  vote  to  Francis 
Stephen  at  the  Imperial  election. 

This  treaty,  to  which  Hesse-Cassel  and  Wiirtemberg 
hastened  to  accede,  was  a  great  triumph  for  Maria  Theresa 
and  a  corresponding  blow  to  Frederick  and  France.  Deprived 
of  the  moral  support  of  her  alliance  with  Bavaria,  it  is  rather 
difficult  to  see  what  reasons  France  had  for  continuing  the 
war.  Probably  the  successes  of  1 744  in  Flanders  had 
whetted  Louis  XV’s  attitude  for  conquest :  to  make  peace  as 
matters  then  stood  would  be  a  somewhat  humiliating  con¬ 
fession  of  failure,  and  d’Argenson,  who  was  a  firm  supporter 

1  The  Treaty  of  Warsaw  was  arranged  in  January,  but  not  ratified  till  May  18th. 

2  A  secret  article  placed  12,000  troops  at  the  disposal  of  the  Maritime  Powers 
on  hire. 


1745]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II 


155 


of  the  Prussian  alliance,  was  possessed  by  the  belief  that  he 
would  be  able  to  induce  Augustus  III  to  stand  for  the  Empire. 
It  was  therefore  resolved  to  adopt  a  vigorous  offensive  in  Italy 
and  the  Netherlands  as  the  means  of  extorting  a  good  peace 
from  Maria  Theresa. 

This  decision  was  not  palatable  to  Frederick.  He  had 
urged  upon  France  an  attack  upon  Hanover  which  should 
cut  that  country  off  from  the  ecclesiastical  electorates  and,  as 
in  1741,  intimidate  the  Electoral  College,  while  another  army 
should  advance  through  Bavaria  into  Bohemia;  but  France 
had  had  enough  of  campaigning  in  Germany,  and  did  not  care 
enough  about  the  choice  of  an  Emperor  to  sacrifice  to  that 
object  the  chance  of  territorial  aggrandisement  in  Italy  and 
the  Netherlands.  The  measure  of  Frederick’s  annoyance  may 
be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  he  offered  to  vote  for  Francis 
Stephen  if  Silesia  were  guaranteed  to  him.  Short  of  money 
and  other  resources,  he  found  himself  threatened  with  the 
hostility  of  Saxony  and  of  Saxony’s  patron  Russia,  the  third 
party  to  the  Treaty  of  Warsaw.1 

Thus,  while  50,000  Austrians  under  Bathyanny  moved 

4 

Westward  after  the  conclusion  of  the  Treaty  of  Fiissen  and 
establishing  themselves  near  Frankfurt  covered  the  meeting  of 
the  Electoral  College,  France  instead  of  reinforcing  Coigni, 
who  had  moved  to  the  Middle  Rhine  after  the  fall  of  Freiburg, 
was  devoting  her  principal  efforts  to  the  Netherlands.  A 
magnificent  army  of  90,000  men  under  Marshal  Saxe  converged 
upon  Tournay  and  laid  siege  to  that  important  fortress 
(April  19th).  To  save  it  the  Duke  of  Cumberland,  who  had 
been  appointed  commander-in-chief  of  the  Allied  Forces, 
collected  some  50,000  men  near  Brussels  and,  moving  up  to 
its  relief,2  engaged  Saxe  at  Fontenoy  on  May  1  ith  (N.S.). 
Cumberland,  whose  daring  blow  at  the  most  vulnerable  point 
of  the  French  line  was  hardly  the  mixture  of  stupid  courage 
and  ignorant  incompetence  described  by  some  writers,  was 
only  baulked  of  success  by  the  misconduct  of  the  Dutch  on 

1  This  guaranteed  the  succession  to  Poland  to  the  son  of  Augustus  III,  promised 
to  reconquer  Silesia  for  Maria  Theresa  and  reduce  Prussia  to  its  original  limits : 
Augustus  in  was  to  vote  for  Francis  Stephen.  As  far  as  Russia  was  concerned  it 
was  the  work  of  Bestuchev,  who  favoured  Austria. 

2  Of  this  force,  53  battalions  and  90  squadrons,  the  Dutch  provided  26  and  40, 
the  British  22  and  26,  the  Hanoverians  5  and  16,  the  Austrians  only  8  squadrons, 
d’Aremberg  having  taken  24,000  men  to  the  Main  to  join  Bathyanny. 


156  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1745 


his  left.  They  completely  failed  to  second  the  efforts  of  the 
British  and  Hanoverian  infantry,  whose  conduct  on  this  day 
has  probably  never  been  surpassed  and  rarely  equalled.  Had 
the  Dutch  only  engaged  the  attention  of  the  French  right 
and  prevented  Saxe  bringing  up  troops  from  that  quarter  to 
hurl  upon  Cumberland’s  column,  the  French  could  not  have 
averted  defeat ;  as  it  was,  Saxe  was  able  to  throw  in  all  his 
reserves  and  win.1 

Ten  days  after  the  battle  the  Dutch  garrison  of  Tournay 
surrendered  after  a  feeble  defence,  and  Cumberland,  unable  to 
cover  both  Ghent  and  Brussels,  had  the  mortification  of  seeing 
the  former  taken  by  the  French  on  July  1  ith  (N.S.).  He  had 
to  retire  to  Vilvorde  between  Antwerp  and  Brussels,  but  he 
was  unable  to  make  any  attempt  to  interfere  with  Saxe’s 
operations  against  West  Flanders,  for  he  received  orders  to 
send  back  to  England  first  ten  battalions  of  infantry,  and 
finally  his  whole  army  save  five  regiments  of  horse  and  one  of 
foot.  The  reason  for  their  recall  was  that  on  July  25  th  Prince 
Charles  Edward  Stuart  had  landed  in  Scotland.  The  con¬ 
nection  between  the  “  Forty-Five  ”  and  the  course  of  affairs  on 
the  Continent,  more  especially  in  Germany,  may  perhaps  seem 
remote,  but  it  was  the  recall  of  Cumberland  and  his  army  quite 
as  much  as  the  slackness  of  the  Dutch,  the  extreme  efficiency 
of  Saxe’s  engineers  and  artillerymen,  or  the  absence  of  the 
Austrians,  which  was  responsible  for  the  ease  with  which  the 
French  in  the  latter  half  of  1745  overran  West  Flanders. 

The  absence  of  the  Austrians  from  the  Netherlands  was 
due  to  their  presence  at  Frankfurt  for  the  Imperial  election. 
From  the  moment  the  French  crossed  the  frontier  of  Flanders, 
Francis  Stephen’s  election  was  assured.  Together,  Frederick 
and  France  might  have  perhaps  overcome  the  reluctance  of 
Augustus  III,  but  the  futile  negotiations  which  the  untiring 
d’Argenson  was  conducting  with  Saxony  merely  prevented 
any  chance  of  the  French  army  on  the  Rhine  taking  the 
offensive,  as  d’Argenson  supposed  Augustus  would  not  wish  to 
push  his  candidature  home  with  French  bayonets.2  When 

1  For  Fontenoy,  see  the  Hon.  J.  W.  Fortescue’s  History  of  the  British  Army , 
ii.  pp.  109-120;  the  Trevor  MSS.  p.  116;  the  Gentleman’s  Magazine  for  June 
and  July  1745;  the  reports  of  Saxe  and  Ligonier,  E.H.R.,  1897,  pp.  524-527; 
pp.  51-70  °f  the  Life  of  Marquess  Townshend;  and  pp.  395-429  of  de  Broglie’s 
Marie  Therese  Impiratrice ,  vol.  i. 

2  De  Broglie,  Marie  Therlse  Imptratrice ,  ii.  94. 


1745]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II 


157 


d’Aremberg’s  corps  arrived  from  the  Netherlands  and  20,000 
Frenchmen  were  called  up  from  the  Rhine  to  fill  the  gaps 
which  Fontenoy  had  made  in  Saxe’s  army,  only  forms 
remained  to  be  gone  through.  On  September  13th  the  Grand 
Duke  of  Tuscany  was  elected  Emperor  under  the  title  of 
Francis  I,  the  Empire  returned  to  the  Hapsburgs,  and  Marie 
Theresa  had  obtained  one  of  her  two  main  objects.1 

From  attaining  the  other,  the  recovery  of  Silesia,  she  was, 
however,  as  far  removed  as  ever.  After  the  abortive  invasion 
of  Upper  Silesia  in  January,  the  Austrian  main  body  had  re¬ 
mained  inactive  on  the  Bohemian  side  of  the  mountains,  their 
light  cavalry  scouring  the  country  and  pushing  their  raids 
over  Silesia.  Not  till  May  was  Frederick,  who  had  to  refit 
and  rest  his  shattered  army,  able  to  deal  effectively  with  them. 
Then  Winterfeldt  and  Ziethen,  now  making  his  first  appearance 
of  any  importance,  routed  and  dispersed  a  large  body  of 
Austrian  irregulars  near  Jaegerndorf.  But  it  was  the  Austrians 
and  not  the  Prussians  who  took  the  offensive  in  the  campaign. 
On  May  31st,  Prince  Charles  of  Lorraine  left  Landshut, 
intending  to  move  upon  Breslau  down  the  Striegauwasser  and 
cut  the  town  off  from  Frederick  and  the  main  Prussian  army, 
70,000  strong,  who  were  lying  round  Schweidnitz  and  Jauernik 
in  the  valley  of  the  Schweidnitzwasser.  Frederick  made  no 
attempt  to  defend  the  passes,  and  the  Saxons,  who  formed  the 
Austrian  vanguard,  were  as  far  forward  as  Striegau  before 
he  moved  Westward  from  Schweidnitz  and,  under  cover  of  a 
sharp  skirmish  between  his  right  and  the  Saxons,  crossed  to 
the  left  bank  of  the  Striegauwasser  on  the  evening  of  June  3rd. 
His  object  in  thus  delaying  had  been  to  make  certain  of  a 
battle :  had  he  defended  the  passes,  the  Austrians  might  not 
have  pushed  their  attack  home. 

Had  Prince  Charles  of  Lorraine  kept  sufficiently  close  to 
the  Saxons  it  is  possible  that  the  battle  of  June  4th  might 
have  had  a  very  different  ending,  for  the  Prussian  rearguard, 
which  was  to  form  their  left,  did  not  manage  to  arrive  at  the 
appointed  time,  having  been  delayed  by  the  breakdown  of  a 
bridge  over  the  Striegauwasser.  Thus,  when  on  the  morning 
of  June  4th  Charles  at  length  arrived  on  the  field  from 
Hohenfriedberg,  the  Saxons  had  already  attacked  Striegau, 

1  Frederick  n  abstained  from  voting,  as  did  the  Elector  Palatine,  but  the  validity 
of  the  Bohemian  vote  was  acknowledged. 


158  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1745 


had  been  repulsed,  and  then  thrown  into  confusion  by  a 
counter-attack  of  the  Prussian  cavalry,  but  Frederick’s  line  was 
not  yet  formed.  However,  Charles  hesitated,  and  hesitating 
gave  Ziethen  time  to  push  his  belated  cavalry  across  a  ford 
and  throw  himself  into  the  gap  in  the  Prussian  line.  At  the 
same  time  the  Prussian  right  advanced  to  turn  the  flank  of 
the  Austrian  left,  exposed  by  the  rout  of  the  Saxons,  and 
the  Austrians  giving  way  all  along  the  line  fell  back  towards 
the  passes.  Had  Frederick  pursued  vigorously  he  might  have 
converted  the  Austrian  defeat  into  a  disaster ;  as  it  was,  they 
straggled  through  the  hills  in  some  disorder,  leaving  2500 
prisoners  behind,  besides  losing  some  9000  killed  and 
wounded.  The  Prussians,  whose  loss  amounted  to  under  5000, 
were  too  much  fatigued  by  their  night  march  to  profit  by 
the  enemy’s  discomfiture  at  once,  but  Frederick  soon  followed 
the  retreating  Austrians  into  Bohemia.  Before  his  advance 
Prince  Charles  at  first  retired,  but  standing  at  bay  at  Konig- 
gratz  brought  Frederick  to  a  standstill  (July  20th).  For 
about  six  weeks  Frederick  remained  inactive  on  the  Elbe : 
he  could  not  drive  the  Austrians  from  their  lines,  and  his 
own  position  was  somewhat  precarious.  At  the  end  of  his 
resources,  with  no  prospect  of  obtaining  assistance  from  France 
either  in  men  or  money,  he  was  really  anxious  to  extract  a 
peace  which  would  leave  him  Silesia,  and  hoped  by  this  bold 
offensive  to  lend  weight  to  the  representations  George  II  was 
making  to  Maria  Theresa.  However,  the  country,  as  in  1744, 
was  bitterly  hostile  to  him :  Austrian  light  troops  swarmed 
upon  his  flanks  and  rear,  cut  off  his  convoys  and  foragers  and 
so  straitened  him  for  supplies  that  when,  on  September  16th, 
the  capture  of  Neustadt  cut  his  line  of  retreat  through  that 
town  to  Glatz,  he  at  once  decided  to  retire  on  the  other  line, 
by  Landshut  and  the  Schatzlar  Pass,  while  it  was  still  open, 
and  on  September  18th  he  set  out  for  Silesia. 

So  slow,  however,  was  his  retreat  that  Charles  of  Lorraine  was 
able  to  get  in  between  him  and  the  Schatzlar  Pass  and  to  bar  the 
retreat  at  Sohr.  On  the  morning  of  September  29th,  Frederick 
suddenly  found  the  Austrians  moving  in  battle  array  upon  his 
unsuspecting  camp.  His  cavalry  outposts  had  served  him 
badly,  and  it  was  only  by  his  own  extraordinary  exertions  and 
by  the  good  drill  and  discipline  of  his  men  that  he  was  able 
to  form  them  up  in  time  to  meet  the  attack.  The  key  to  the 


1 745]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II 


U9 


Prussian  position  was  a  hill  upon  their  right  which  the 
Austrian  left  wing  at  once  seized  and,  planting  28  guns  on  it, 
proceeded  to  enfilade  their  enemy.  Quick  to  see  the  import¬ 
ance  of  this  point,  Frederick  concentrated  all  his  efforts  on  its 
capture,  and  “  refusing  ”  his  left,  assailed  the  hill  vigorously 
with  the  bulk  of  his  infantry,  while  Biiddenbrock  and  the 
cavalry  of  the  right  supported  the  attack  by  charging  the 
Austrian  cavalry  opposite  them  and  driving  them  back  into 
some  broken  ground  in  their  rear.  At  the  second  attempt  the 
Prussians  mastered  the  hill  and  then  turned  to  succour  their 
left  and  centre,  which  were  hard  pressed,  the  village  of 
Burghersdorf  in  the  centre  being  in  great  danger  of  falling  into 
the  Austrian  hands.  The  intervention  of  the  Prussian  right 
proved  decisive,  the  Austrians  drew  off,  and  Frederick  found 
himself  able  to  continue  his  march  to  Silesia  unmolested.  If 
he  had  died  before  1 7  5  6  the  battle  of  Sohr  would  be  his  chief 
claim  to  reputation  as  a  tactician.  Surprised  though  he  was, 
the  promptitude  with  which  he  formed  up  his  men,  the 
quickness  with  which  he  realised  the  importance  of  the  hill, 
the  resolution  and  courage  with  which  he  concentrated  all  his 
efforts  on  this  critical  point,  his  good  judgment  in  refusing  his 
left,  make  Sohr  as  peculiarly  his  victory  as  Mollwitz  had  been 
his  soldiers’.  The  Austrians  threw  away  the  great  advantage 
with  which  they  began  the  battle  by  their  fatal  slowness 
and  want  of  vigour.  An  immediate  and  headlong  attack 
before  the  Prussians  could  form  up  was  all  that  was  needed. 
Precision  should  have  been  sacrificed  to  promptitude,  exact¬ 
ness  to  energy.  But  Charles  of  Lorraine  could  not  shake 
off  the  trammels  of  his  pedantic  training,  and  energy  was  a 
stranger  to  him. 

Just  before  the  battle,  Frederick  had  concluded  with 
George  II  a  treaty  of  great  importance.  Always  anxious  to 
bring  the  Silesian  war  to  an  end,  and  if  possible  to  bring 
Prussia  into  line  with  Austria  and  the  Maritime  Powers 
against  France,  George  II  had  at  this  moment  an  unusually 
urgent  reason  for  wishing  to  achieve  this  end.  The  same 
cause  which  had  paralysed  Cumberland’s  defence  of  the 
Netherlands,  the  Jacobite  insurrection  in  Scotland,  was  filling 
George  with  alarms  for  the  safety  of  his  beloved  Planover, 
which  he  saw  exposed  to  a  French  attack.  Accordingly  he 
hastened  to  come  to  terms  with  Frederick,  whom  he  found 


i6o  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1745 


ready  enough  to  listen  to  his  overtures.  On  August  26th,  1745, 
by  the  Convention  of  Hanover  the  two  Powers  exchanged 
guarantees  of  each  other’s  possessions,  Silesia  being  definitely 
included  among  those  of  Prussia.  Frederick  further  promised 
not  to  vote  against  Francis  Stephen,  and  it  was  agreed  that 
Maria  Theresa  should  be  allowed  to  accede  to  the  treaty  any 
time  within  the  next  six  weeks. 

But  Maria  Theresa  did  not  require  six  minutes  in  which  to 
decide.  Indignantly  refusing  to  accede  to  the  Convention,  she 
turned  to  France  and,  through  the  mediation  of  Saxony,  made 
overtures  which,  in  the  light  of  the  terms  arranged  at  Aix-la- 
Chapelle,  France  was  very  ill-advised  to  refuse.  Maria  Theresa 
would  have  surrendered  the  greater  part  of  the  French 
conquests  in  the  Netherlands — which  after  all  concerned  the 
Maritime  Powers  rather  than  Austria — in  return  for  peace  and 
the  recognition  of  Francis  as  Emperor.  But  Louis  XV’s 
appetite  for  military  glory  and  d’Argenson’s  equally  infatuated 
adherence  to  the  idea  of  the  Prussian  alliance  caused  the 
rejection  of  this  chance  of  a  substantial  territorial  gain.  Maria 
Theresa  fell  back  on  the  alternative  of  a  joint  attack  upon 
Brandenburg  in  concert  with  her  Saxon  ally.  Relying  on 
Russia’s  intimation  to  Frederick  that  she  would  assist  Saxony 
if  the  Elector  were  attacked  by  Prussia,  Maria  Theresa  planned 
an  advance  down  the  Elbe  by  Rutowski’s  Saxons  supported 
by  an  Austrian  division,  to  be  covered  by  an  advance  of  the 
Austrian  main  body  into  Lusatia.  This,  if  only  it  were 
executed  with  the  necessary  dash  and  secrecy,  was  by  no 
means  an  unpromising  scheme :  it  would  have  cut  off  Frederick 
in  Silesia  from  his  hereditary  dominions.  Secrecy,  however, 
the  indispensable  condition  of  success,  was  not  observed. 
Count  Briihl  indiscreetly  let  out  the  scheme  to  the  Swedish 
Ambassador  at  Dresden,  and  by  this  means — for  Sweden  was 
on  good  terms  with  Frederick,  whose  sister  Ulrica  had  married 
Adolphus  Frederick  of  Holstein,  the  heir  to  Sweden — the 
Prussians  were  warned  in  time  to  make  preparations.  Accord¬ 
ingly,  when  Charles  of  Lorraine  entered  Lusatia  on  November 
20th  by  the  valley  of  the  Lusatian  Neisse,  Frederick  had 
already  concentrated  35,000  men  at  Liegnitz,  while  the  pre¬ 
sence  of  30,000  more  at  Halle  under  Leopold  of  Anhalt-Dessau 
checked  the  Western  advance.  On  November  21st,  Frederick 
moved  West,  thinking  to  fall  upon  the  Austrian  rear  and  cut 


1745]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II 


1 6 1 


them  off  from  Bohemia.  But  on  this  occasion  their  slowness 
proved  a  positive  advantage.  It  was  on  their  van,  not,  as  he  had 
expected,  on  their  rear  that  Ziethen  hurled  himself  at  Henners- 
dorf  on  November  24th.  The  Saxons,  a  mere  brigade  of  barely 
3000  strong,  were  surprised  and  cut  to  pieces;  but  the  check, 
slight  as  it  was,  sufficed  to  cause  Charles  to  change  his  plan. 
He  fell  back  hastily  to  Zittau  and  thence  by  the  pass  of  Gabel 
to  Aussig  on  the  Elbe,  moving  from  there  down  the  Elbe  to 
the  assistance  of  Rutowski  and  Grime,  against  whom  Leopold 
of  Anhalt-Dessau  was  advancing.  It  is  possible  that  Charles 
may  have  hoped  to  draw  Frederick  after  him,  and  thereby 
prevent  him  from  assisting  his  general  by  involving  the 
Prussian  main  body  in  the  hills ;  but  Frederick  was  not 
tempted,  and  moved  Westward  by  Bautzen  on  the  bridge  over 
the  Elbe  at  Meissen. 

Meanwhile  Leopold  was  moving  on  Dresden,  somewhat 
too  slowly  for  Frederick’s  satisfaction,  for  his  delays  allowed 
Rutowski  to  concentrate  and  Grtine  to  join  the  Saxons.  The 
campaign  thus  resolved  itself  into  a  race  between  Leopold,  the 
Austrians  and  Frederick.  Would  Leopold  be  able  to  defeat 
Rutowski  before  Lorraine  could  arrive,  or  would  Lorraine  be 
up  in  time  for  his  army  to  unite  with  Rutowski  and  crush 
Leopold  before  Frederick  could  succour  him  ?  As  usual, 
Charles  of  Lorraine  was  very  slow,  and  had  not  arrived  when, 
on  December  1 5  th,  Leopold  came  up  to  the  strong  position 
occupied  by  Rutowski  and  Grime  at  Kesselsdorf,  a  few  miles 
North  of  Dresden.  The  position,  however,  had  the  grave 
defect  that  the  stream  and  ravine  at  the  foot  of  the  hill  on 
which  the  Austrians,  who  formed  the  right,  were  posted,  while 
making  that  wing  all  but  impregnable,  would  hinder  the  de¬ 
livering  of  a  counter-attack.  Accordingly  the  old  general 
massed  his  troops  opposite  Kesselsdorf,  where  the  Saxons  had 
thirty  guns  well  entrenched.  Twice  he  hurled  his  men  at  the 
battery,  twice  they  were  repulsed,  but  the  imprudence  of  the 
Saxon  counter-attack  gave  Leopold  the  chance  he  wanted. 
His  cavalry  fell  upon  the  Saxons  and  overthrew  them.  The 
infantry  rallying  under  cover  of  this  diversion  came  on  again, 
entered  Kesselsdorf  on  the  heels  of  the  Saxons  and  carried 
the  great  battery,  whose  fire  the  counter-attack  had  masked. 
This  decided  the  day ;  the  Saxons  gave  way  in  disorder,  and 
though  the  Austrians  beat  off  an  attack  and  got  away  safely 


1 62  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1745 


to  rejoin  Prince  Charles,  Dresden  opened  its  gates  at  once  and 
the  Elector  had  to  fly. 

Leopold’s  victory  proved  really  decisive.  Even  Maria 
Theresa  could  no  longer  resist.  Not  only  did  Saxony  come 
to  terms  with  Frederick  and  accept  the  Convention  of  Hanover, 
but  England  threatened  to  cease  paying  her  subsidies  unless 
she  made  peace  with  Prussia.  In  vain  Harrach  negotiated 
with  Vaulgrenant,  the  French  Minister  at  Dresden  :  Louis  XV 
and  d’Argenson  were  not  prepared  to  effect  a  complete 
revolution  in  foreign  policy  at  the  moment  when  d’Argenson’s 
schemes  for  detaching  Sardinia  from  Maria  Theresa’s  side 
seemed  on  the  point  of  success  and  the  expulsion  of  the 
Hapsburgs  from  the  Italian  peninsula  appeared  only  a  question 
of  days.1  Reluctantly  she  gave  way,  and  on  December  25th 
the  Treaty  of  Dresden  definitely  gave  up  Silesia  and  Glatz  to 
Frederick.  In  return  he  recognised  Francis  I  as  Emperor,  and 
guaranteed  the  Pragmatic  Sanction. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  Frederick  was  decidedly  fortunate 
in  being  able  to  obtain  from  Maria  Theresa  all  he  desired  when 
he  was  practically  at  the  end  of  his  resources.  It  was  all  very 
well  for  him  to  declare  that  Marshal  Saxe’s  victory  at  Fontenoy 
was  of  no  more  use  to  him  than  a  victory  on  the  Scamander. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  French  successes  in  the 
Netherlands  and  Italy  had  great  influence  over  Maria  Theresa, 
for  had  Fontenoy  been  a  victory  for  the  Allies  or  the  campaign 
in  Italy  different  in  its  result,  Frederick  might  have  found  her 
as  unyielding  as  before.  Indeed,  he  had  good  reason  to  be 
grateful  to  Charles  Edward  and  the  Scottish  Jacobites,  for  that 
diversion  was  the  principal  cause  of  the  Convention  of  Hanover, 
to  say  nothing  of  its  influence  on  the  campaign  in  the  Nether¬ 
lands.  The  Highlanders  contributed  in  no  small  measure  to 
the  acquisition  of  Silesia  by  Prussia.  Above  all,  it  was  fortun¬ 
ate  for  Frederick  that  the  Czarina,  on  whose  co-operation  Austria 
and  Saxony  had  confidently  relied,  should  have  so  suddenly 
grown  cool  in  the  cause  and  have  failed  to  do  what  was 
expected.  It  would  not  have  been  safe  for  Prussia  to  count 
on  her  continued  neutrality,  and  her  intervention  in  earnest 
would  have  turned  the  tables  completely. 

But  if  it  was  largely  to  the  efforts  of  France  and  the  other 
enemies  of  Austria  that  Frederick  owed  his  success  in  capturing 

1  Cf.  p.  164. 


1745]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II 


163 

and  keeping  Silesia,  his  own  share  in  this  important  acquisition 
was  not  small.  The  decision,  the  promptitude  and  the  energy 
which  he  displayed  form  a  striking  contrast  to  the  hesitation 
of  Fleury,  the  helplessness  of  Charles  VII,  the  tergiversations 
of  Augustus  III,  and  the  dilatoriness  of  Neipperg  and  Charles 
of  Lorraine.  Frederick’s  policy  was  undoubtedly  determined 
by  an  unscrupulous  ambition  and  an  unbridled  selfishness ;  it 
was  contrary  to  loyalty  to  the  interests  of  Germany,  it  did  not 
look  beyond  the  aggrandisement  of  the  Hohenzollern.  But  it 
had  the  merit  of  being  consistent  and  resolute,  and  so  far  it 
deserved  to  be  successful.  Moreover,  if  Fortune  threw  many 
opportunities  in  Frederick’s  way,  it  was  not  every  one  who 
would  have  been  able  to  turn  these  chances  to  such  striking 
advantage. 

With  the  Treaty  of  Dresden  the  purely  German  phase  of 
the  Austrian  Succession  War  came  to  an  end ;  the  battles 
of  the  three  years  which  the  war  had  still  to  run  were  to 
be  fought  in  other  lands  than  Germany.  In  Italy  Austria 
was  undoubtedly  fighting  to  obtain  some  compensation  for 
the  territorial  loss  she  had  undergone  in  Germany ;  in  the 
Netherlands  the  French  were  seeking  among  other  things  to 
retrieve  that  military  reputation  which  their  performances  on 
the  Elbe  and  the  Danube  had  tarnished  ;  but  though  German 
troops  were  largely  employed  in  both  these  theatres  of  war, 
and  though  Austrian  territories  were  the  scene  of  operations,  it 
is  the  results  rather  than  the  events  of  these  years  which  con¬ 
cern  German  history. 

It  has  already  been  mentioned  that  the  peril  of  her  Italian 
possessions  was  one  of  the  contributing  causes  of  Maria 
Theresa’s  reluctant  assent  to  the  Treaty  of  Dresden.  To  be 
in  danger  of  being  expelled  from  Italy  was  indeed  a  striking 
contrast  to  the  high  hopes  which  she  had  entertained  when  she 
signed  the  Treaty  of  Worms  ;  but  things  had  not  gone  well  for 
the  Allies  in  1744,  and  1745  saw  the  Austrians  apparently  on 
the  point  of  being  ousted  from  the  Milanese.  Of  all  the  losses 
which  the  Hapsburg  monarchy  had  sustained  in  recent  years, 
that  of  the  rich  lands  of  Naples  was  perhaps  the  most  grievous, 
and  the  task  allotted  to  Traun’s  successor,  Lobkowitz,  was  to 
attempt  to  recover  it.  Spanish  rule  was  most  unpopular 
in  Naples,  and  it  was  hoped  that  a  popular  rising  against  Don 
Carlos  would  certainly  follow  if  the  Austrian  forces  were  once 


1 64  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1744-5 


to  appear  on  Neapolitan  soil.  But  Lobkowitz  had  not 
penetrated  beyond  Monte  Rotondo  in  the  Campagna  when  the 
Spanish  army  of  North  Italy,  aided  by  a  French  division 
under  Conti,  created  a  diversion  by  assailing  Piedmont  from 
Dauphine  (July  1744)  and  laying  siege  to  the  fortress  of  Coni. 
In  great  alarm  Charles  Emmanuel  recalled  his  contingent  with 
Lobkowitz’s  force,  from  which  Maria  Theresa  also  detached  a 
regiment,  that  her  slippery  ally  might  have  no  cause  to  com¬ 
plain  that  he  was  being  left  in  the  lurch.  Thus  weakened, 
Lobkowitz  had  no  alternative  but  to  retire  into  winter-quarters 
behind  the  Metaurus  (Nov.),  and  thence  early  in  the  next 
year  to  Modena.  Meanwhile  Leutrum’s  gallant  defence  of 
Coni  had  proved  successful,  the  Franco-Spaniards  raising 
the  siege  and  retiring  into  Dauphine,  though  they  retained 
possession  of  both  Savoy  and  Nice. 

With  the  spring  of  1745  matters  took  a  turn  even  more 
unfavourable  to  the  Allies.  Genoa,  annoyed  by  English  interfer¬ 
ence  with  her  commerce  and  indignant  at  the  proposed  cession 
of  F'inale  to  Sardinia,  definitely  threw  in  her  lot  with  the 
Bourbons,  and  so  opened  the  Riviera  route  for  a  junction 
between  the  Spaniards  from  Naples  and  the  Franco-Spanish 
force  under  Don  Philip,  with  whom  was  now  associated 
Marshal  Maillebois  (April).  Unable  to  dispute  the  passage 
of  the  Apennines  against  considerable  numerical  superiority, 
the  Austro-Sardinians  retired  to  Bassignano,  whence  the 
Austrians  were  before  long  called  off  by  an  advance  of  the 
Spaniards  into  the  Milanese  from  Pavia.  The  Sardinians, 
left  isolated  at  Bassignano,  were  attacked  by  the  French  and 
badly  beaten  (Sept.  27th),  the  whole  country  South  of 
the  Tanaro  passing  into  the  hands  of  the  Franco-Spaniards, 
while  the  Austrians  found  themselves  pressed  back  towards 
Tyrol  by  the  Spaniards  under  Gages,  who  occupied  Milan 
almost  unopposed  on  December  1 9th.  The  only  weak  point 
in  the  military  position  of  the  victorious  Bourbons  was  that 
in  their  eagerness  to  possess  themselves  of  the  Milanese  the 
Spaniards  allowed  themselves  to  become  somewhat  widely 
separated  from  their  allies. 

It  was  now  that  the  persevering  but  visionary  d’Argenson 
threw  himself  into  the  task  of  concluding  a  separate  peace  with 
Charles  Emmanuel,  as  the  necessary  preliminary  to  his 
favourite  project  of  the  federation  of  Italy.  The  negotiations 


1 745-6]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II  165 


of  Turin  proved  abortive  in  the  end,  because  the  jealousy  of 
Spain  and  Sardinia  caused  delays  of  the  utmost  importance 
which  gave  time  for  the  conclusion  of  the  Treaty  of  Dresden 
and  the  despatch  of  Austrian  reinforcements  to  Italy. 
Charles  Emmanuel  was  probably  genuine  enough  in  open¬ 
ing  negotiations  with  d’Argenson :  if  Maria  Theresa  could 
not  defend  her  own  possessions,  it  was  not  his  place  or  policy 
to  risk  his  dominions  for  her  sake.  But  the  delays  due  to 
Spain’s  refusal  to  agree  to  the  terms  for  which  Sardinia  held 
out  gave  the  situation  time  to  change  so  much  that  the  shifty 
King,  who  feared  the  Bourbons  more  than  he  did  the  Hapsburgs, 
finally  used  the  negotiations  to  lull  Maillebois  into  a  false 
security  from  which  he  was  rudely  awakened  when,  early  in 
March,  the  Piedmontese  troops  were  suddenly  put  in  motion 
against  the  scattered  Franco-Spaniards.  Within  a  very  short 
time  Maillebois  was  driven  back  to  Novi  and  the  Austrians, 
returning,  ousted  Gages  and  Don  Philip  from  the  Milanese. 
Indeed,  it  was  only  by  a  brilliant  counterstroke,  a  daring 
offensive  return  to  the  North  of  the  Po,  which  drew  the  Austro- 
Sardinians  after  him,  that  Maillebois  finally  managed  to  save 
himself  and  his  allies  from  being  severed  from  France  by  a 
Sardinian  attack' on  their  communications.  Even  as  it  was 
the  Franco-Spaniards  had  to  retire  behind  the  Var  (Sept. 
17th),  leaving  Genoa  to  be  besieged  and  taken  by  the 
Austrians.  The  turn  of  fortune  was  complete ;  the  more 
so  because,  on  July  9th,  Philip  v  of  Spain  had  died,  and  with 
his  death  Elizabeth  Farnese’s  influence  had  ceased  to  be 
predominant  at  Madrid.  The  new  King,  Ferdinand  VI,  was 
not  prepared  to  sacrifice  Spain  to  his  stepmother’s  dynastic 
ambitions,  and  did  not  intend  to  risk  much  in  Italy. 

Masters  of  Italy,  and  with  their  ally  Charles  Emmanuel  no 
longer  in  any  danger,  the  Austrians  would  have  moved  against 
Naples  had  not  the  English  insisted  upon  their  undertaking 
an  invasion  of  Provence.  This  enterprise  resulted  in  failure, 
for  a  rising  at  Genoa  forced  the  Austrian  garrison  to  evacuate 
the  town  after  several  days  of  savage  street-fighting  (Dec. 
5th  to  10th),  and  the  invaders  had  to  fall  back  behind  the  Var 
(Feb.  2nd,  1747)  in  order  to  cover  the  siege  of  Genoa  which 
was  vigorously  conducted  by  the  Austrians  with  the  aid  of 
Admiral  Medley  and  the  English  Mediterranean  squadron. 
To  relieve  Genoa,  Belleisle  undertook  as  a  diversion  an  invasion 


1 66  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1745-7 


of  Piedmont  by  the  Col  d’Assiette,  which  resulted,  indeed, 
in  a  disastrous  repulse  from  the  strong  position  of  Exilles 
(July  19th),  but  succeeded  in  drawing  off  the  Piedmontese  con¬ 
tingent  from  Genoa  and  so  forcing  the  Austrians  to  raise  the 
siege.  With  the  repulse  at  Exilles  the  operations  of  the  war 
in  Italy  were  practically  at  an  end,  for,  though  the  Austrians 
resumed  the  siege  of  Genoa  in  the  next  year,  they  were  unable 
to  take  the  town.  As  far  as  Italy  was  concerned,  Maria  Theresa 
had  been  successful :  she  had  not  only  come  through  the  war 
with  undiminished  territories,  but  was  actually  in  possession  of 
those  of  the  Duke  of  Modena.  That  at  the  conclusion  of  peace 
she  was  unable  to  retain  this  conquest,  but,  on  the  contrary,  had 
to  sacrifice  Parma  and  Piacenza,  was  due  to  the  turn  the  war 
had  taken  in  another  theatre.  Italy  had  to  pay  the  debts  of 
Flanders. 

It  was  not  so  much  the  defeat  at  Fontenoy,  but  the 
Jacobite  insurrection  in  Scotland  which  had  left  Flanders  at 
the  mercy  of  Maurice  de  Saxe.  After  the  recall  of  Cumber¬ 
land  and  his  army  Saxe  found  the  Eastern  Netherlands  an 
easy  prey.  With  England  fully  occupied  at  home  and  Austria 
comparatively  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  the  Netherlands,  the 
burden  of  defence  was  left  mainly  to  the  Dutch,  whose 
adhesion  to  their  allies  was  extremely  faint-hearted.  Indeed 
they  went  so  far  as  to  open  negotiations  for  a  separate  peace ; 
and,  though  these  fell  through,  it  would  have  been  quite  easy 
for  France  to  detach  the  United  Provinces  from  England  and 
Austria  had  d’Argenson  only  listened  to  the  advice  of  Saxe 
and  permitted  that  general  to  make  Holland  the  objective 
of  his  campaign.  Had  this  been  done  there  is  little  doubt 
that  the  Dutch  would  have  hastened  to  make  peace,  in  which 
case,  with  Ostend  lost  and  Holland  neutral,  England  would 
have  had  no  landing-place  near  the  scene  of  operations,  and 
would  have  found  co-operation  with  the  Austrians  exceedingly 
difficult.  But  d’Argenson  was  afraid  of  provoking  an  anti- 
French  reaction  in  Holland,  and  therefore  Saxe  had  to  devote 
himself  to  the  reduction  of  the  Eastern  Netherlands. 

In  this  enterprise  Saxe  was  able  to  avail  himself  of  another 
French  army,  that  of  Conti,  to  which  had  been  entrusted  the 
task  of  demonstrating  along  the  frontiers  of  the  Empire  in  order 
to  overawe  the  minor  Princes  of  South  and  Western  Germany 
and  prevent  Maria  Theresa  from  recruiting  the  Coalition  among 


1746]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II  167 

them.  But  to  do  this  there  was  no  need  of  an  army.  The 
despatch  of  a  French  envoy  to  the  Diet  of  Ratisbon  to  promise 
that  France  would  respect  the  neutrality  of  the  Empire  was 
quite  sufficient.  Wiirtemberg  and  the  Elector  Palatine  were 
decidedly  favourable  to  France ;  and  though  Bavaria  hired  out 
6000  troops  to  the  Maritime  Powers,  the  influence  of  Maurice 
de  Saxe  over  his  half-brother  induced  Augustus  III  to 
declare  for  the  Empire  remaining  neutral,  a  policy  which  was 
cordially  supported  by  the  three  ecclesiastical  Electors  whose 
principal  desire  was  to  keep  the  war  out  of  their  coasts. 
Thus  Conti’s  army  could  be  safely  diverted  from  the  Middle 
Rhine  to  the  Netherlands,  where  it  speedily  reduced  Mons 
(July  11th)  and  laid  siege  to  Charleroi.  Saxe  had  opened 
operations  in  January  by  a  successful  dash  at  Brussels,  which 
had  fallen  after  a  three  weeks’  siege  (Feb.  20th):  he  then 
dislodged  the  Allies  from  the  Demer,  forced  them  back  into 
Holland  and  detached  Clermont  to  form  the  siege  of  Antwerp, 
which  he  covered  with  his  main  body.  Antwerp  fell  on  May 
31st,  by  which  time  a  considerable  force  of  Allies  was 
beginning  to  collect  at  Breda  to  take  the  field ;  Culloden 
(April  1 6th)  had  set  free  a  small  English  corps  and  the 
6000  Hessians  who  had  been  sent  across  to  Scotland  in 
February,  and  Charles  of  Lorraine  had  come  up  from  Austria 
with  large  reinforcements.  Towards  the  end  of  July  the 
Allies  made  an  attempt  to  relieve  Charleroi  but  were  too  late, 
its  fall  occurring  (Aug.  1st)  before  they  could  get  much 
beyond  the  Mehaigne.  They  then  took  post  to  cover  Namur 
but  were  dislodged  by  the  capture  of  Huy,  which  imperilled 
their  communications  and  forced  them  to  withdraw  East  of 
the  Meuse.  Namur  was  promptly  besieged  and  fell  before 
the  end  of  September,  while  Lorraine  was  equally  unsuccessful 
in  an  attempt  to  save  Liege,  being  ousted  by  Saxe  from  his 
position  at  Roucoux  after  a  sharply  -  contested  action 
(Oct.  1  ith). 

Thus  1746  closed  with  the  Middle  Meuse  in  the  hands 
of  Saxe,  and  only  Maastricht  left  to  cover  Holland  from 
attack.  Nor  was  1747  any  more  satisfactory  to  the  Allies. 
Cumberland  replaced  Charles  of  Lorraine  as  commander-in¬ 
chief  ;  but  though  he  collected  over  90,000  troops  of  all 
nationalities,  he  was  unable  to  prevent  the  reduction  of  the 
mouth  of  the  Scheldt  by  Saxe’s  trusted  lieutenant  Lowendahl, 


1 68  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1747 


who  took  Sluys  and  Cadzand,  and  was  only  prevented  from 
adding  Zealand  to  his  conquests  by  the  timely  arrival  of  a 
British  squadron  with  reinforcements  (April  to  May).  Then, 
when  Cumberland  had  succeeded  in  drawing  Saxe  from  his 
lines  between  Malines  and  Louvain  by  moving  up  the  Meuse 
to  attack  a  detached  corps  under  Clermont,  he  found  himself 
anticipated  by  Saxe  in  an  attempt  to  secure  the  Herdeeren 
heights  just  South-West  of  Maastricht  (July  1st),  and  was 
defeated  in  the  battle  which  was  fought  next  day  for  that 
position.  Lauffeldt  was  a  repetition  of  Fontenoy,  for  the 
traditional  immobility  of  the  Austrians  allowed  Saxe  to  neglect 
them  and  concentrate  his  attack  on  the  British  and  their 
German  auxiliaries ;  and  in  this  quarter  of  the  field  the  mis¬ 
conduct  of  the  Dutch  at  a  very  critical  moment  sacrificed  the 
fruits  of  the  splendid  behaviour  of  the  British,  the  Hessians 
and  the  Hanoverians.  The  Allies  were  able  to  save  Maastricht, 
but  Saxe  could  safely  detach  Lowendahl  to  besiege  and  take 
(Sept.  1 6th)  the  great  fortress  of  Bergen-op-Zoom,  with  which 
most  of  Dutch  Brabant  fell  into  French  hands. 

Thus  by  the  end  of  1747  all  but  a  very  small  part  of  the 
Austrian  Netherlands  had  been  conquered  for  Louis  XV ;  and 
though,  as  d’Argenson  had  predicted,  the  French  violation  of 
Dutch  territory  had  produced  a  reaction  in  Holland  against 
the  Francophil  “  Burgher  party,”  the  upshot  of  which  was  the 
practical  restoration  of  the  monarchical  element  with  the 
election  (May  1747)  of  William  of  Nassau-Dillenberg  as 
Stadtholder  and  Captain-General  of  the  Netherlands,  this 
revolution  was  of  more  political  than  military  importance,  for 
the  Dutch  defence  of  their  territories  was  extremely  weak,  not 
to  say  culpably  negligent  and  indifferent.1  But  if  the  Maritime 
Powers  had  no  reason  to  wish  for  another  campaign  on  land, 
the  pressure  of  England’s  supremacy  at  sea,  now  satisfactorily 
reasserted  by  the  victories  of  Anson  (May  3rd)  and  Hawke 
(October  14th)  in  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  was  exerting  an  equally 
powerful  influence  over  Louis  XV  in  the  direction  of  peace. 
Austria  possibly  would  have  liked  to  try  another  campaign 
in  Italy,  where  she  might  have  hoped  to  achieve  something 
at  the  expense  of  Naples  or  Genoa,  but  England  and  France 
were  both  thoroughly  weary  of  the  war,  and  the  negotiations 
of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  begun  early  in  1 748,  produced  a  definite 

1  Cf.  Checquers  Cotirt  Papers ,  Hist.  MSS.  Commission,  pp.  376-391. 


1748]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II 


169 


result  on  April  30th,  when  the  representatives  of  England, 
France  and  Holland  signed  the  preliminaries  of  peace.  Maria 
Theresa’s  was  almost  the  only  voice  to  be  raised  in  opposition 
to  peace,  for  she  had  recently  (May  1746)  secured  the  promise 
of  Russian  assistance  on  a  considerable  scale,  and  she  was 
afraid  that  the  compensations  which  peace  was  bound  to  make 
necessary  would  have  to  be  provided  at  her  expense.  In  the 
hopes  of  getting  better  terms  out  of  France  by  a  separate 
negotiation,  she  instructed  Kaunitz,  her  representative  at  Aix, 
to  try  to  arrange  a  treaty  with  Louis  XV ;  but  France  was 
simultaneously  negotiating  with  the  Maritime  Powers,  and  as 
their  naval  supremacy  made  their  hostility  more  formidable 
than  was  Maria  Theresa’s,  it  was  with  England  and  Holland 
that  the  preliminary  treaty  was  signed. 

Not  till  nearly  six  months  later,  however,  was  the  definite 
treaty  signed — six  months  of  every  kind  of  intrigue  and  bar¬ 
gaining.  In  the  end,  Maria  Theresa  found  herself  compelled 
to  accede  to  the  treaty  by  the  fact  that  she  could  do  nothing 
if  deserted  by  England  and  Sardinia,  while  they  were  in¬ 
dependent  of  her.  At  length,  on  October  1 6th,  the  pleni¬ 
potentiaries  of  England,  France  and  Holland  affixed  their 
signatures  to  the  treaty ;  Spain  followed  suit  on  October  20th, 
Austria  on  November  8th,  Sardinia  on  November  20th.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  German  history  the  most  important  clauses 
were  those  which  guaranteed  Silesia  and  Glatz  to  Frederick  II, 
which  recognised  Francis  II  as  Emperor,  and  which  guaranteed 
the  Pragmatic  Sanction  except  as  regarded  Silesia  and  Parma 
and  Piacenza.  To  Maria  Theresa  and  the  Hapsburgs  the 
evacuation  by  France  of  the  Austrian  Netherlands,  the  restora¬ 
tion  of  the  Barrier-fortresses  to  the  Dutch,  who  had  done  so 
little  to  defend  them,  the  cession  of  Parma  and  Piacenza  to 
Don  Philip  of  Spain,  and  of  the  Ticino  boundary  in  Lombardy 
to  Charles  Emmanuel,1  and  the  restoration  of  Francis  of 
Modena  to  his  dominions,  were  also  of  great  importance. 
The  reciprocal  restitution  of  conquests  by  England  and  France 
shows  that  the  peace  marks  not  an  end  but  a  pause  in  the 
great  struggle  for  the  sea,  which  affected  Germany  indirectly 
not  a  little  and  directly  still  more  through  the  Anglo- 
Hanoverian  connection. 

If,  then,  it  be  asked  what  Power  had  gained  most  by  the 

3  He  had  to  give  up  Finale  to  Genoa,  but  recovered  Nice  and  Savoy. 


170  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1748 


war,  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  answer.  By  promptly  taking 
advantage  of  the  embarrassments  of  allies  and  enemies  alike, 
Frederick  of  Prussia  had  gained  territory  and  a  reputation :  he 
was  still  to  have  to  fight  for  his  share  in  the  spoils,  but  of  all 
the  vultures  which  had  gathered  round  the  carcase  of  the 
Hapsburg  monarchy  he  alone  had  succeeded  in  appeasing  his 
appetite.  It  was  not  much  consolation  to  France  for  all  her 
efforts,  her  vast  expenditure  in  men  and  money,  her  hard-won 
victories  in  the  Netherlands,  to  have  established  Don  Philip 
in  Parma  and  to  have  materially  assisted  the  rise  of  Prussia. 
As  for  Bavaria  and  Saxony,  they  had  gained  nothing,  but  they 
had  been  detached  from  the  French  alliance  and  were,  for  the 
immediate  future  at  any  rate,  to  be  faithful  allies  of  Austria. 
Sardinia  had  made  another  step  forward.  Spain,  now  that 
Elizabeth  Farnese’s  power  was  no  more,  could  follow  under 
Ferdinand  VI  the  dictates  of  national  policy  untrammelled 
by  a  dynastic  attraction  to  Italy.  Russia  had  made  another 
appearance  in  the  European  area.  England  had  retrieved 
a  bad  start  at  sea  and,  despite  Fontenoy  and  Lauffeldt,  had 
largely  contributed  to  preventing  France  from  retaining  the 
Netherlands ;  she  might  also  claim  to  have  helped  the  Haps¬ 
burg  monarchy  not  a  little  to  weather  the  storm  which  had 
threatened  to  engulf  it,  even  if  her  actions  had  been  prompted 
rather  by  her  own  interests  than  by  the  dictates  of  mere 
disinterestedness.  Holland’s  part  in  the  war  had  been  but 
feeble  and  her  power  was  obviously  on  the  decline,  while  the 
bonds  which  bound  her  to  the  English  alliance  were  as 
obviously  becoming  relaxed. 

Finally,  the  question  must  be  answered,  how  had  Austria 
come  through  this  time  of  trial  ?  Thanks  largely  to  her  own 
magnificent  courage  and  resolution,  to  an  endurance  which  had 
never  failed,  and  to  a  determination  which  had  been  proof 
against  all  trials,  Maria  Theresa  had  brought  her  inheritance 
safely  through  a  sea  of  formidable  dangers,  lessened,  it  is  true, 
by  the  loss  of  Silesia  and  Parma,  but  strengthened  in  ways 
which  amply  compensated  for  those  losses.  Her  dominions 
had  been  welded  together  by  the  war,  which  had  done  much  to 
excite  the  loyalty  and  patriotism  of  the  heroic  Queen’s  subjects. 
It  was  not  in  Hungary  only  that  Maria  Theresa’s  appeals  had 
touched  an  answering  chord,  though  it  was  a  great  thing  to 
have  converted  that  source  of  weakness  into  a  source  of 


Map  to  illustrate  THE  CAMPAIGN  OFMOLLWITZ. 


V.'tcuJnSlir*,  ISo* 

E. Miles  i  t  i  i  i  1  t  i  i  i  I 
10  0 


-i 


50 


SOHR  Sep.  30 lb  1745. 


uk _ n  fctori.  jj  Hi  h  m _  ifc  H  iriliffi"  .....  ..  kL. _ **  m _ -  ^  ^  ^  y.  ^ 


1748]  THE  AUSTRIAN  SUCCESSION  WAR,  II 


171 

strength.  The  Imperial  dignity  had  been  won  back  and 
secured  to  the  new  line  of  the  Hapsburgs.  If  clear  signs  were 
not  wanting  that  the  old  Anglo-Austrian  alliance  had  been 
strained  almost  to  the  breaking-point,  Bavaria,  hitherto  an 
enemy  and  a  client  of  France,  and  Saxony  were  now  among 
Austria’s  allies;  the  Russian  alliance  of  1746,  even  if  it  be 
held  to  have  been  in  itself  undesirable,  did  strengthen  her 
hands  against  Prussia,  and  the  attitude  of  the  Bourbon  Powers 
was  by  no  means  uncompromisingly  hostile.  With  one  Power 
only  were  Maria  Theresa’s  relations  of  an  unfriendly  nature. 
The  guarantee  of  Silesia  which  she  had  at  last  given  grudgingly 
and  reluctantly  was  a  pledge  by  which  she  could  hardly  be 
expected  to  abide.  Other  accidental  circumstances  had 
combined  to  prevent  Austria  doing  herself  justice  in  the 
struggle  for  Silesia :  meanwhile  the  army  had  improved  greatly 
during  the  war,  and  peace  would  permit  of  further  increases  and 
improvements,  and  a  chance  might  come  when  the  conditions 
would  favour  Austria  more. 

It  was  for  these  reasons,  because  Maria  Theresa,  far  from 
being  reconciled  to  the  loss  of  Silesia,  was  still  planning  all 
possible  means  of  recovering  it,  and  also  because  the  Anglo- 
French  quarrel  was  undecided,  that  the  Peace  of  Aix-la- 
Chapelle  was  a  truce  not  a  real  peace,  and  that  the  settlement  of 
the  two  great  questions  at  issue  was  merely  postponed  until 
1756-1763. 


CHAPTER  X 


MARIA  THERESA’S  REFORMS  AND  THE 
DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION 


MARIA  THERESA  had  agreed  to  the  Peace  of  Aix-la- 
Chapelle  with  the  less  reluctance  because  even  she 
had  become  convinced  that  peace  was  necessary,  and  that  she 
had  more  to  gain  from  it  than  from  prolonging  the  war.  She 
saw  that  the  road  to  the  recovery  of  Silesia  lay  rather  through 
allowing  her  resources  to  recuperate  and  through  reforms 
in  her  army  and  her  administration  than  through  a  war 
which  offered  little  prospect  of  a  satisfactory  issue.  “  Peace, 
retrenchment  and  reform  ”  was  therefore  her  programme  on 
the  morrow  of  Aix-la-Chapelle ;  and  she  was  the  better  able 
to  set  about  such  a  task  because — as  she  herself  put  it — 
“  Providence  had  relieved  her  by  death  of  councillors  too 
prejudiced  to  give  useful  advice,  too  respectable  and  too 
meritorious  to  be  dismissed.” 

Of  the  septuagenarians  of  whom  the  Conference  had 
consisted  in  October  1740,  Sinzendorff  had  died  in  1742, 
Gundacker  Stahremberg  in  1745,  Philipp  Kinsky  in  1748. 
To  Sinzendorff  had  succeeded  Count  Ulefeld,  a  well-meaning, 
honest  but  incapable  man,  unequal  to  the  important  position 
of  Chancellor,  which  he  owed  in  no  small  degree  to  the 
influence  of  Bartenstein.  This  latter,  Secretary  to  the  Confer¬ 
ence  since  1727,  was  virtually  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  from 
1740  to  1753.  He  had  won  Maria  Theresa’s  confidence  by 
supporting  such  favourite  projects  of  hers  as  the  proposal 
that  Francis  Stephen  should  be  co-Regent,  but  his  blind 
belief  in  Fleury’s  good  intentions  had  somewhat  shaken  his 
credit.  More  of  a  lawyer  than  a  statesman,  narrow-minded 
and  unprogressive,  somewhat  obstinate  and  self-satisfied,  his 
influence  declined  as  that  of  Kaunitz  rose,  and  when  the  latter 
was  summoned  to  office  in  1753,  Bartenstein  practically  retired 
from  the  administration.  At  the  same  time  Ulefeld  exchanged 


172 


1 748] 


MARIA  THERESA’S  REFORMS 


1.73 


the  Chancellorship  for  an  office  more  adapted  to  his  capacities, 
that  of  Grand  Chamberlain  ( Obersthofmeister ).  The  vacancy 
in  the  Chancellorship  was  filled  by  the  man  whose  name  must 
always  be  associated  with  that  of  Maria  Theresa,  whose  chief 
minister  he  was  and  under  whom  he  may  be  said  to  have 
almost  ruled  Austria.  Wenceslaus  Anthony  von  Kaunitz  was 
in  1753  a  man  of  forty-two  years  of  age,  who  had  served 
Austria  as  the  Emperor’s  representative  with  the  Diet  at 
Ratisbon,  as  envoy  at  several  Italian  courts,  as  chief  minister 
to  the  Archduchess  Maria  Anna  in  the  Netherlands,  as 
Ambassador  at  St.  James’,  and  as  plenipotentiary  at  Aix-la- 
Chapelle.  From  1750  to  1753  he  was  Ambassador  to  the 
Court  of  Versailles,  and  after  laying  the  foundations  for  the 
Franco-Austrian  reconciliation  during  this  period  he  returned 
to -Austria  to  become  Chancellor  in  1753.  His  principal 
contribution  to  the  reforms  which  the  Empress-Queen  was 
now  undertaking  was  the  separation  between  the  State  Chan¬ 
cery  ( Staatskanzlei )  and  the  purely  Austrian  Court  Chancery 
( Hofkanzlei ).  Under  him  the  State  Chancery  was  transformed 
into  a  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs  to  which  was  entrusted  also 
the  control  of  the  affairs  of  Lombardy  and  the  Netherlands. 
But  while  principally  concerned  with  foreign  policy,  Kaunitz, 
whose  authority  completely  surpassed  that  of  his  colleagues, 
exercised  no  small  influence  over  domestic  affairs.  In  the 
Moravian  troubles  of  1 777  his  voice  was  uplifted  in  favour 
of  conciliation,  and  being  a  somewhat  lukewarm  adherent  of 
the  Catholic  doctrine  he  was  able  to  moderate  the  extreme 
measures  to  which  a  religious  fervour  verging  on  intolerance 
at  times  inclined  Maria  Theresa. 

More  immediately  responsible  for  the  domestic  reforms 
were  Count  Frederick  William  Haugwitz  (1700-1765),  a 
Silesian  nobleman  who  had  adhered  to  the  Austrian  cause, 
Count  Rudolf  Chotek  (1706-1771),  a  member  of  one  of  the 
oldest  families  in  Bohemia,  and  Count  Charles  Hatzfeldt 
(1718— 1793),  another  Bohemian  noble.  Of  these  three 
Haugwitz  was  probably  the  ablest,  and  it  was  in  him  that 
Maria  Theresa  found  her  most  efficient  assistant  in  the  task 
of  reform.  When  the  Court  Chancery  was  separated  from 
the  State  Chancery  in  1753  it  was  he  who  was  placed  at  the 
head  of  what  was  henceforward  to  be  virtually  a  Ministry  of  the 
Interior.  In  this  capacity  he  was  the  founder  of  the  central- 


174  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1748 


ised  bureaucracy  which  Maria  Theresa  endeavoured  to 
substitute  for  the  semi-feudal  system  of  government  she  had 
inherited.  Haugwitz  succeeded  in  abolishing  the  exemption 
of  the  nobility  from  taxation,  brought  the  somewhat  recal¬ 
citrant  Estates  under  the  control  of  the  central  government 
through  the  bureaucracy,  introduced  a  new  system  of  taxation, 
and  centralised  the  administration.  Chotek,  first  prominent 
as  the  negotiator  of  the  Peace  of  Fiissen,1  reorganised 
the  administration  of  Tyrol,  Trieste  and  Further  Austria 
between  1747  and  1748,  became  head  of  the  Indirect 
Taxation  Bureau  {Banco- President)  in  1749  and  President  of 
the  Treasury  (. Hofkammer )  in  1759,  thus  obtaining  complete 
control  over  the  whole  finances.  In  1762  he  succeeded 
Haugwitz  at  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior.  His  chief  work 
was  in  connection  with  indirect  taxation  and  the  development 
of  the  resources  of  the  country ;  its  trade,  manufactures,  roads 
and  bridges  came  under  his  control.  More  aristocratic  in 
sentiments  than  Haugwitz,  he  was  more  in  sympathy  with 
the  Estates,  and  not  uncommonly  there  was  friction  between 
the  two  Ministers.  Hatzfeldt,  best  known  as  President  of 
the  Council  of  State,  succeeded  in  reconciling  the  nobles  and 
clergy  to  the  policy  of  centralisation  in  which  he  was  a  firm 
believer.  Education  was  his  principal  care,  but  he  did  'much 
during  the  Seven  Years’  War  to  obtain  money.  In  1765  he 
became  President  of  the  Treasury,  on  Chotek’s  death  in  1771 
Minister  of  the  Interior,  which  post  he  resigned  in  the  same 
year  to  Count  Henry  Bliimegen  in  order  to  become  head  of 
the  new  Council  of  State  {StaatsratJi). 

Another  minister  whose  influence  was  considerable,  though 
hardly  so  beneficial,  was  Count  Joseph  Harrach,  who  for 
twenty-four  years  (1 739-1 762),  and  to  the  disadvantage  of 
the  Austrian  army,  was  President  of  the  War  Council. 
Incapable  and  quite  past  his  work,  he  was  an  encumbrance  on 
the  efficiency  of  the  Council  and  the  army,  and  it  would  have 
been  well  for  Maria  Theresa  had  she  made  up  her  mind  to 
dismiss  him  in  1756,  when  he  was  already  seventy-eight  years 
of  age,  instead  of  waiting  till  the  end  of  the  war,  in  which  his 
incapacity  cost  Austria  so  dear. 

The  key  to  the  reforms  of  Maria  Theresa  is  to  be  found 
in  her  wish  to  free  the  authority  of  the  central  government 

1  Cf.  p.  154. 


MARIA  THERESA’S  REFORMS 


175 


1748] 

from  the  trammels  which  the  continued  existence  of  what  had 
once  been  a  feudal  constitution  imposed  upon  it.  She  sought 
to  make  the  State  supreme  over  the  Estates,  to  put  the  whole 
before  the  parts,  the  welfare  of  the  Austrian  monarchy  and  all 
the  peoples  subject  to  it  before  the  local  and  provincial 
interests  which  had  shown  themselves  so  strong  in  Upper 
Austria  and  in  Bohemia  in  1741.  Maria  Theresa  was  not 
attacking  real  constitutional  liberties  when  she  endeavoured 
to  sweep  away  the  constitutional  powers  of  the  nobles  and  clergy 
and  to  take  from  them  their  immunity  from  taxation.  The 
objects  of  her  attack  were  mere  relics  of  a  past  stage  of 
development,  now  become  obsolete  and  a  danger  to  the 
higher  interests  of  the  State  as  a  whole.  “  Despotic  ”  though 
her  actions  may  have  been,  in  spirit  she  was  far  from  Louis  XV 
or  even  Frederick  II.  She  had  a  real  wish  for  the  welfare  of 
her  subjects,  and  her  efforts  to  benefit  the  peasantry  and 
improve  their  position  show  that  it  was  not  merely  to  increase 
the  tax-paying  capacity  of  her  dominions  so  that  they  might 
support  a  vast  army  that  she  undertook  these  reforms. 

The  first  and  most  important  step  was  to  deprive  the 
provincial  Estates  of  the  authority  they  still  possessed  over 
the  army.  Before  the  army  could  be  made  a  really  efficient 
instrument  for  war,  it  was  necessary  to  do  away  with  the 
pernicious  system  of  dual  control  by  which  the  supply  of 
funds  for  its  maintenance  depended  on  the  fluctuating  votes 
of  the  local  Estates,  which  in  each  case  strove  continually  to 
shift  the  burden  of  national  defence  on  to  the  shoulders  of 
the  other  provinces.  Indeed  the  army  was  provincial  rather 
than  royal.  Each  province  raised  and  maintained  its  own 
contingent  mainly  by  taxes  in  kind.  Uniformity  of  organi¬ 
sation  was  lacking,  and  the  central  government  practically 
had  to  negotiate  every  year  with  each  province  for  the  support 
of  the  various  contingents.  Haugwitz’s  scheme,  the  so-called 
Ten  Years’  Recess,  was  intended  to  do  away  with  this 
inefficient  and  cumbrous  system.  A  fixed  sum  was  demanded 
from  each  province,  and  to  set  the  whole  matter  on  a  firm 
basis  it  was  voted  for  a  period  of  ten  years,  thus  practically 
taking  the  army  completely  out  of  the  control  of  the  Estates. 
So  new  a  departure  could  not  fail  to  arouse  considerable 
opposition  from  the  nobility,  more  especially  as  their  cherished 
privilege  of  immunity  from  taxation  was  at  the  same  time 


176  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1748 


taken  away,  all  classes  being  liable  to  the  new  taxes  which 
replaced  the  old  payments  in  kind.  In  the  Conference  itself 
Count  Frederick  Harrach  assumed  the  leadership  of  the  opposi¬ 
tion,  but  his  colleagues  did  not  support  him,  and  Maria  Theresa 
was  able  to  carry  her  point,  and  with  the  aid  of  Haugwitz 
and  Chotek  to  induce  the  Estates  to  pass  the  required  vote. 

The  reorganisation  of  the  Austrian  army  which  was  thus 
made  possible  took  for  its  model  the  Prussian  system.  The 
Army  was  brought  completely  under  the  control  of  the 
Sovereign,  uniformity  and  system  were  introduced  into  its 
establishments,  uniforms,  pay,  weapons  and  interior  economy. 
A  much  more  careful  military  training  was  introduced  with  a 
new  drill  and  the  iron  ramrod  of  the  Prussian  infantry.  Camps 
of  exercise  were  started,  manoeuvres  were  held.  Officers  were 
given  a  chance  of  studying  their  profession  though  the 
restriction  of  commissions  to  men  of  noble  birth  was  main¬ 
tained.  A  modified  conscription  based  on  the  lines  of  the 
Prussian  cantoning  system  assured  the  means  of  keeping  the 
regiments  up  to  their  establishment,  and  measures  were  adopted 
for  the  improvement  of  discipline,  especially  that  of  the  Irre¬ 
gular  troops.  One  important  step  was  the  regimentation  of 
the  Frontier  Forces  ( Grenzsoldaten ),*  whose  turbulence  and 
excesses  had  done  much  to  neutralise  their  efficiency  as 
soldiers.  In  no  department  was  so  much  improvement 
effected  as  in  the  artillery.  In  this  branch  Austria 
had  no  need  to  fear  comparisons  with  other  armies,  though 
it  may  be  questioned  whether  the  very  efficiency  of  their 
artillery  did  not  somewhat  defeat  its  own  object  by  increas¬ 
ing  their  immobility  and  their  love  for  strong  positions  and 
defensive  tactics.  It  may  be  held,  however,  with  as  much 
plausibility  that  this  preference  for  the  defensive  caused  such 
great  importance  to  be  attached  to  the  improvement  of  the 
artillery.  One  reform,  however,  which  would  have  been  of 
great  service  was  not  carried  out.  The  War  Council,  of 
which  the  aged  Count  Joseph  Harrach  was  the  head,  was 
organised  as  a  civilian  and  not  as  a  military  board.2  It  was 


1  These  Grenzsoldaten  were  a  special  institution  :  the  whole  population  of  the 
frontier  districts  from  the  Adriatic  to  Transylvania  were  organised  on  military  lines, 
and  were  specially  liable  to  service. 

-  It  was  in  1753  divided  into  three  departments,  dealing  respectively  with 
military  organisation,  discipline  and  supply. 


1748] 


MARIA  THERESA'S  REFORMS 


17; 


not  till  the  evils  of  this  arrangement  had  exercised  their  perni¬ 
cious  influence  in  the  Seven  Years’  War  that  Maria  Theresa  at 
last  (1762)  dismissed  Harrach,  replaced  him  by  Daun,  and 
substituted  Generals  for  the  civilians  of  whom  the  Council 
had  till  then  been  mainly  composed.  Khevenhiiller  and 
Traun,  the  two  commanders  who  had  done  most  to  distinguish 
themselves  in  the  War  of  the  Austrian  Succession,  had  not 
survived  till  the  peace;1  but  Neipperg  did  better  at  the  War 
Council  than  in  the  field,  and  to  Wenceslaus  Liechtenstein, 
Director  General  of  Ordnance  since  1744,  belongs  most  of 
the  credit  for  the  great  improvement  of  the  artillery. 

But  the  reorganisation  of  the  Army  was  only  one  branch 
of  the  reforms  which  were  introduced.  Almost  more  important 
was  the  amalgamation  of  the  Court  Chanceries  ( Hofkanzleis ) 
of  Austria  and  Bohemia,  whose  separate  existence  had  hitherto 
been  a  great  stumbling-block  in  the  path  of  administrative 
unity  and  efficiency.  While  the  Chanceries  were  relieved 
of  all  judicial  work,  which  was  transferred  to  a  High  Court 
of  Justice  erected  at  Vienna  for  Austria  and  Bohemia  in  1749, 
they  were  fused  in  a  Directorium  which  was  the  chief  instru¬ 
ment  through  which  the  central  government  exercised  control 
over  local  administration.  In  each  province  there  was  a 
subordinate  court  ( Representation ),  which  was  the  channel  of 
communication  between  the  Directorium  and  the  District 
Councils  ( Kreis-Amter )  which  were  entrusted  with  the  super¬ 
vision  of  local  affairs.  Their  sphere  of  influence  included  the 
control  of  municipal  government  and  the  enforcement  of  the 
decrees  of  the  central  government ;  but  Maria  Theresa  left  the 
actual  work  of  local  government  very  largely  in  the  hands  of 
the  local  nobility,  who,  unlike  the  French  noblesse,  did  identify 
themselves  with  the  country  districts  and  did  serve  the  State 
in  all  its  various  departments. 

Pressure  of  work  upon  the  Directorium  caused  all 
business  connected  with  the  finances  to  be  altogether  trans¬ 
ferred  in  1762  to  the  Treasury  ( Hofkammer ),  on  which  the 
old  name  of  “joint  Chancery  of  Bohemia  and  Austria”  was 
restored  to  the  Directorium ,2  and  its  head  again  became 
Court  Chancellor  ( Obersthofkanzler ).  Subordinate  to  the 

Treasury  were  the  Banko- Deputation,  an  office  which  dealt 
especially  with  the  indirect  taxes,  the  Ministry  of  Commerce, 
1  Khevenhiiller  died  in  1744,  Traun  early  in  1748-  2  Wolf,  p.  96. 


12 


178  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1748 


the  local  financial  chambers  ( Landkammern ),  and  a  special 
department  for  the  management  of  the  public  debt  and  loans 
( Hofrechenkammer )  not  to  mention  Revenue  and  Customs 
officials. 

In  the  management  of  the  finances  great  improvements 
were  effected,  principally  by  Chotek,  though  the  strain  of 
the  Seven  Years’  War  completely  upset  the  equilibrium 
between  revenue  and  expenditure  which  he  seemed  to  be 
reaching  during  the  peace.  Heavy  taxes  had  to  be  imposed, 
and  as  the  nobles  were  not  taxed  at  the  same  rate  as  the 
peasants,  even  when  their  exemption  had  been  abolished, 
the  improvement  in  the  financial  administration  added  to  the 
burdens  on  the  taxpayers  rather  than  reduced  them.  Much 
was  done  to  increase  the  indirect  revenue  by  giving  encourage¬ 
ment  to  trade  and  manufactures.  A  rigidly  protective  tariff 
formed  part  of  the  system  ;  but  internal  tolls  between  province 
and  province  were  much  reduced  and  this  hindrance  to  unity 
partly  removed,  though  as  Hungary  remained  outside  this 
fiscal  system,  “  dualism  ”  was  extended  from  the  political  to 
the  economic  sphere. 

The  reform  of  the  judicial  system  was  another  task  which 
engaged  the  attention  of  Maria  Theresa  and  her  councillors. 
A  code  of  law  was  very  much  needed  on  account  of  the  great 
differences  between  the  various  parts  of  the  Hapsburg  dominions, 
but  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  Civil  Code  produced  in  1767 
was  not  one  of  the  most  successful  efforts  of  the  Theresian  epoch. 
Long,  unwieldy  and  somewhat  unsystematic,  under  Joseph  II 
it  had  to  be  replaced  by  a  new  codification.  Better  success 
attended  the  compilation  of  a  Criminal  Code.  This  “  Nemesis 
Thei'esiana  ”  of  1 769,  though  it  retained  the  rack  and  branding, 
and  contained  clauses  dealing  with  sorcery  and  witchcraft, 
was  yet  a  decided  step  in  advance,  and  was  improved  by 
the  abolition  of  torture  in  1 776.  In  1788,  Joseph’s  code 
superseded  it. 

In  like  manner,  attempts  were  made  to  improve  education. 
The  Universities  were  subjected  to  sweeping  reforms  and 
taken  over  by  the  government  as  a  State  department,  not 
perhaps  with  altogether  the  best  results  to  education.  Great 
attention  was  paid  to  the  schools,  both  secondary  and  primary. 
Van  Swieten,  one  of  the  most  trusted  advisers  of  the  Empress, 
was  principally  responsible  for  this  branch,  and  his  reforms 


1 74&] 


MARIA  THERESA’S  REFORMS 


179 


embraced  technical  as  well  as  intellectual  education,  and  must 
be  regarded  as  a  very  remarkable  contribution  to  the  regenera¬ 
tion  of  Austria. 

In  the  main,  then,  Maria  Theresa’s  efforts  to  establish  unity 
and  a  centralised  system  of  government  were  successful. 
One  hears  little  in  her  reign  of  the  hostility  between  Slav 
and  Teuton,  between  German  and  Czech.  Her  personal 
popularity  was  great,  her  courage  and  steadfastness  in  the 
time  of  danger  had  won  the  admiration  and  devotion  of  many 
of  her  subjects,  and  the  strain  and  trials  of  the  war  served  to 
show  the  different  provinces  that  they  had  higher  interests  than 
merely  seeking  their  own  advantage,  and  that,  after  all,  even 
their  particular  interests  might  be  best  served  by  union  with 
their  neighbours.  Common  perils  surmounted  safely  helped 
to  give  unity.  Indeed,  after  1748  one  may  fairly  look  upon 
the  epithet  “  Austrian  ”  as  implying  more  than  merely 
“  subject  to  Hapsburg  rule,”  one  may  regard  the  phrase 
“  Austrian  nationality  ”  as  something  more  than  a  mere 
contradiction  in  terms  when  applied  to  Bohemians  and 
Styrians.  But  there  were  still  parts  of  the  Hapsburg 
dominions  which  remained  distinct  and  isolated.  The 
“  dualism  ”  of  Austria  and  Hungary  was  still  a  weak  point 
in  the  Hapsburg  monarchy,  geographical  even  more  than 
political  and  racial  considerations  prevented  the  Netherlands 
and  Lombardy  from  ever  becoming  anything  more  than 
accidental  additions  to  the  central  mass.  Maria  Theresa 
was  too  statesmanlike,  too  practical  and  too  tactful  to  attempt 
to  try  to  apply  to  these  outlying  provinces,  devoid  as  they 
were  of  any  connection  with  Austria  and  its  immediate 
dependencies,  the  same  reforms  she  was  introducing  else¬ 
where.  She  was  able  to  see  what  escaped  the  notice  of  her 
doctrinaire  son,  that  differences  in  circumstances  necessitate 
differences  in  methods.  She  preferred  to  govern  the  Nether¬ 
lands  in  the  way  best  suited  to  their  conditions,  and  her  rule 
never  provoked  revolt  in  Belgium.  They  were  left  in  the 
enjoyment  of  their  federal  Constitutions.  The  laws  and 
privileges  of  the  provinces,  of  which  the  Joyeuse  Entree  of 
Brabant  is  typical,  were  left  untouched.  The  Estates  enjoyed 
local  autonomy  tempered  only  by  the  presence  at  Vienna 
of  a  Netherlands  Council 1  and  at  Brussels  of  a  Governor 

1  From  1757  on  it  was  a  department  of  the  State  Chancery. 


i8o  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1748 


of  the  Netherlands,  usually  a  member  of  the  dynasty  with 
some  capable  nobleman  as  his  chief  minister.  Thus  Eugene 
had  been  Governor  from  1714  to  1725;  Archduchess  Maria 
Elizabeth,  sister  of  Charles  VI,  had  succeeded  him  ;  Charles 
of  Lorraine  and  his  wife  had  held  the  post  jointly,  and  after 
her  death  Charles  retained  it,  though  generally  absent  in 
Austria,  till  1758.  In  his  absence  Konigsegg,  Kaunitz  and 
others  had  acted  as  deputies,  and  from  1753  to  1770  Charles 
Cobenzl  was  virtual  ruler  of  the  provinces.  All  was  not  well, 
however,  with  the  Netherlands.  Though  after  1748  their 
peace  was  untroubled,  they  were  heavily  taxed  for  the  Seven 
Years’  War,  the  government  was  corrupt  and  at  once  slack 
and  oppressive ;  the  Barrier-fortresses  were  allowed  to  fall  into 
complete  disrepair,  and  the  natural  development  of  the  country 
was  greatly  hindered  by  the  cramping  fetters  of  the  Peace  of 
Munster.  Still,  if  sluggish  and  unprogressive,  the  forty  years 
during  which  Maria  Theresa  ruled  the  Netherlands  were  to  be 
preferred  to  the  stormy  season  which  came  in  with  Joseph  II. 

In  Lombardy  somewhat  similar  conditions  prevailed.  The 
Italian  Council  at  Vienna1  and  the  Governor-General  at  Milan 
administered  a  “paternal  despotism”  of  an  uneventful  type, 
which  smothered  the  original  Spanish  sympathies  of  the 
inhabitants  without  creating  any  strong  loyalty  for  Austria. 
From  1754  till  1771  Duke  Francis  III  of  Modena,  who  had 
been  reconciled  to  the  Hapsburgs  by  the  betrothal  of  his  grand¬ 
daughter  and  heiress  to  one  of  Maria  Theresa’s  sons,  acted  as 
Governor- General,  with  Beltrame  Christiani  and  Charles  Firmian 
as  his  ministers.  These  enlightened  ministers  carried  out 
reforms  of  the  same  nature  as  those  introduced  by  Turgot  in 
France.  Education  was  encouraged,  the  Inquisition  abolished, 
and  the  right  of  the  State  to  control  the  Church  successfully 
asserted.  Trade  was  relieved  from  restrictions,  the  possession 
of  land  made  free,  the  numerous  clergy  compelled  to  bear  a 
share  of  the  public  burdens.  Thus  even  under  the  idle  and 
wasteful  Francis  Lombardy  prospered,  and  in  1771  the 
Archduke  Ferdinand  took  over  the  government  and  continued 
to  rule  the  country  on  the  same  lines. 

With  Hungary  matters  were  rather  different.  It  has  been 
said  that  “  Austria  had  an  administration,  but  no  constitution. 
Hungary  a  constitution,  but  no  administration,”  and  this  is  not 

1  Made  a  department  of  the  State  Chancery  in  1757. 


1748] 


MARIA  THERESA’S  REFORMS 


181 


far  from  the  truth.  The  Diet,  composed  of  two  houses,  one  of 
the  magnates  and  higher  clergy,  the  other  of  lesser  nobles  and 
deputies  of  the  cities,  controlled  taxation,  had  an  important 
share  in  legislation  and  could  veto  the  levying  of  troops. 
National  feeling  was  strong  and  by  no  means  favourable  to 
Austria,  so  that  any  reform  coming  from  that  quarter  was 
likely  to  provoke  opposition,  whatever  its  merits.  The  control 
of  the  country  was  in  the  hands  of  the  nobles,  for  the  burghers 
had  little  influence  and  the  peasantry  and  their  goods  were 
practically  the  property  of  their  lords.  The  nobles  paid  no 
taxes,  had  great  political,  social  and  legal  privileges,  including 
even  freedom  from  arrest  and  imprisonment,  and  formed  a 
numerous,  haughty  and  turbulent  aristocratic  caste. 

Maria  Theresa’s  appeal  to  Hungarian  loyalty  in  1741, 
and  the  concessions  by  which  she  obtained  very  valuable 
assistance,  have  already  been  mentioned.  The  Queen  had 
managed  to  evade  the  demands  for  the  nationalising  of 
the  administration  and  for  complete  Home  Rule  in  financial 
and  military  matters,  but  she  had  had  to  guarantee  the 
exemption  of  the  nobility  from  taxation  and  to  promise  to 
treat  Transylvania  as  appertaining  to  Hungary.  Even  after 
1741  the  Hungarian  army  was  weak1  and  its  annual  cost, 
$wo  and  a  half  million  florins,  was  only  half  of  what 
Bohemia,  though  much  smaller,  paid  for  the  same  purpose ; 
while  of  the  annual  revenue  of  20  millions  only  four  were 
devoted  to  the  general  purposes  of  the  whole  State.  In  1751, 
therefore,  Maria  Theresa  tried  to  induce  the  Diet  to  vote 
an  increase  in  the  contribution.  To  this  proposal  the  lesser 
nobles  offered  a  bitter  resistance,  though  the  magnates 
supported  the  Crown.  In  the  end  (June  30th)  a  vote  of  three 
and  a  half  millions  was  carried.  In  the  'Seven  Years’  War, 
Hungary  put  considerable  forces  into  the  field  but  contributed 
little  in  money,  while  in  1764  a  Diet  refused  to  allow  the 
organisation  of  the  “  Insurrection  ”  in  regiments  but  did  vote 
an  additional  600,000  florins.  A  third  subject  which  Maria 
Theresa  broached  at  this  meeting,  a  measure  for  the  ameliora¬ 
tion  of  the  condition  of  the  peasantry,  met  with  unanimous  resist¬ 
ance,  but  nevertheless  she  issued  in  1766  an  ordinance  regulat¬ 
ing  their  position,  fixing  their  obligations,  giving  them  a  legal 
status  and  means  of  redress.  At  the  same  time  she  gave  up 

1  Only  six  regiments. 


1 82  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1748 


summoning  the  Diet,  appointed  Joseph  co-Regent,  and  replaced 
the  Palatine,  a  national  quite  as  much  as  a  royal  official,  by  a 
Stattholder  and  Captain-General,  a  post  conferred  on  Duke 
Albert  of  Saxe-Teschen.  To  this  extent  Maria  Theresa 
managed  to  bring  Hungary  under  her  control,  and  she  was 
successful  on  the  whole  in  conciliating  the  principal  families ; 
but  as  the  dualism  was  too  strong  to  be  overthrown,  she,  with 
her  usual  wisdom,  refrained  from  directly  attacking  it.  Local 
autonomy  she  found  too  flourishing  to  be  brought  under  a 
centralised  system,  and  so  she  left  it  alone.  She  did  manage 
to  curb  and  control  the  lesser  nobles,  but  without  diminishing 
their  strength,  as  Joseph  11  was  to  find  to  his  cost. 

Meanwhile,  changes  no  less  important  were  taking  place  in 
the  foreign  policy  of  Austria.  Not  only  was  Maria  Theresa 
doing  all  she  could  to  build  up  her  own  military  and  financial 
resources  in  order  to  resume  some  day  the  struggle  for  Silesia, 
she  was  also  seeking  allies  who  would  work  with  her  for  the 
abasement  of  the  upstart  Hohenzollern.  Naturally  she  looked 
first  to  the  other  signatories  of  the  Treaty  of  Warsaw  which 
had  been  reaffirmed  and  re-enforced  in  1746  by  the  addition 
of  Russia  ;  while  England,  still  possessed  by  the  old  idea  of 
holding  France  in  check  by  utilising  the  traditional  rivalry 
between  Hapsburg  and  Bourbon,  gave  a  general  adhesion  to 
the  treaty  in  1750,  though  not  to  the  secret  clauses  which 
contemplated  the  dismemberment  of  Prussia.  But  this  old 
Anglo- Austrian  alliance  was  not  quite  the  firm  union  it 
had  been.  The  war  had  strained  it  almost  to  breaking 
point.  England’s  steadfast  refusal  to  help  her  against 
Frederick,  England’s  share  in  wringing  from  her  the  Treaties 
of  Berlin  and  Dresden,  England’s  attempts  to  force  her  to 
unite  with  the  robber  of  Silesia  against  the  Bourbon  from 
whom  she  had  suffered  so  much  less,  and  England’s  support  to 
the  demands  of  Sardinia,  had  made  Maria  Theresa  feel  that 
her  English  ally  had  done  her  as  much  harm  as  her  French 
foe. 

It  was  with  this  idea  in  her  mind  that  shortly  after  the 
Peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  Maria  Theresa  requested  the  members 
of  the  Conference  to  submit  in  writing  their  views  on  the  political 
situation,  and  their  advice  as  to  the  policy  most  advantage¬ 
ous  to  Austria.  The  majority,  including  Marshal  Konigsegg, 
Colloredo,  the  Vice-Chancellor,  and  the  Emperor  himself, 


1748] 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION 


183 


while  admitting  that  the  action  of  England  had  been  selfish  in 
the  extreme,  were  not  prepared  to  recommend  any  change  in 
the  old  system  of  alliances.  Very  different,  however,  were  the 
proposals  of  Kaunitz,  the  most  recent  addition  to  the  Conference. 
Premising  that  under  existing  circumstances  the  Maritime 
Powers,  Russia  and  Saxony  were  the  natural  allies  of  Austria 
and  France,  Prussia  and  Turkey  the  natural  enemies,  he 
pointed  out  that  the  traditional  enemies,  France  and  Turkey, 
were  far  less  formidable  than  the  new  enemy  within  the 
Empire,  especially  as  in  the  case  of  danger  from  France 
Austria  could  confidently  rely  on  that  English  assistance 
which  had  not  been  and  could  not  be  reckoned  upon  against 
Prussia.  But  as  Prussia  was  the  chief  danger,  as,  apart  from 
all  idea  of  regaining  the  lost  Silesia,  Austria  must  for  the 
future  be  on  her  guard  against  another  unprovoked  attack, 
Kaunitz  boldly  proposed  to  try  to  win  the  alliance  of  France 
and  to  secure,  if  not  indeed  her  assistance,  at  any  rate  her 
neutrality  in  the  event  of  another  Silesian  war.  The  price 
which  he  proposed  to  pay  was  one  which  would  be  no  real  loss 
to  Austria,  cessions  of  territory  in  the  Netherlands  to  Don 
Philip  of  Parma,  son-in-law  of  Louis  xv. 

For  a  revolution  so  radical  in  her  foreign  relations,  Maria 
Theresa  was  hardly  prepared.  It  was  true  that  the  idea  of 
coming  to  terms  with  France  had  already  crossed  her  mind ; 
more  than  once,  notably  towards  the  end  of  1745,  she  had 
attempted  to  effect  a  reconciliation.  It  was  true  that  the 
hostility  between  France  and  Austria  no  longer  rested  on  any 
necessary  basis.  With  a  Bourbon  on  the  throne  of  the 
Spanish  Hapsburgs,  with  Germany  so  disunited  that  a  pan- 
German  crusade  to  recover  the  conquests  of  Louis  XIV  was 
quite  out  of  the  question,  with  France  made  secure  on  her 
North-Eastern  and  Eastern  borders  by  the  acquisition  of  a 
scientific  frontier  and  occupied  mainly  with  her  colonial  and 
maritime  rivalry  with  England,  the  relations  of  Bourbon  and 
Hapsburg  were  altogether  different  from  what  they  had  been 
when  Henri  IV  and  Richelieu  had  striven  to  free  France  from 
the  "  Hapsburg  net  ”  which  then  threatened  her.  That  object 
had  been  long  ago  accomplished  ;  France  had  nothing  to  fear 
from  Austria,  and  in  England  and  Prussia  the  two  Powrers  had 
new  rivals  and  new  dangers  to  meet.  However,  the  old 
traditions  were  still  so  strong  that  Maria  Theresa  and  her 


1 84  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1750-3 


husband,  while  regarding  Kaunitz’s  project  as  a  possible 
alternative,  looked  upon  it  mainly  as  a  means  of  bringing 
pressure  to  bear  on  England  in  the  adjustment  of  the  differences 
which  threatened  to  sever  the  old  alliance.  At  the  same  time 
they  thought  it  well  to  seek  to  promote  more  friendly  relations 
with  France,  and  with  that  object  Kaunitz  was  sent  to  Paris  as 
Ambassador  in  1750.  During  his  residence  there  (1750— 
1753)  he  laboured  steadily  at  laying  the  foundations  for  the 
future  alliance  ;  and  if  the  seed  seemed  at  first  to  have  fallen  on 
barren  ground,  if  he  failed  to  prevent  France  supporting  Prussia’s 
opposition  to  the  election  of  Joseph  as  King  of  the  Romans  in 
1752,  he  made  a  beginning.  Among  others,  Madame  de 
Pompadour  was  won  round  to  the  new  policy,  and  when 
Kaunitz  returned  to  Vienna  to  take  up  the  office  of  State 
Chancellor  his  successor  Stahremberg  continued  his  work. 

Still  Kaunitz  himself  would  seem  to  have  for  the  time 
abandoned  his  idea,  and  to  have  even  urged  that  Maria  Theresa 
should  reconcile  herself  to  the  loss  of  Silesia  and  add  Prussia 
to  the  Anglo-Austrian  alliance.  George  II,  however,  hated 
Frederick  and  would  not  hear  of  it,  while  Maria  Theresa  was 
equally  unyielding.  It  might  perhaps  have  been  the  wiser 
policy  in  the  end,  but  it  would  be  unreasonable  to  blame 
Maria  Theresa  for  her  refusal  to  come  to  terms  with  the  Power 
which  had  behaved  so  treacherously  to  her,  and  which  in  its 
dealings  with  Bavaria  and  France  had  shown  itself  no  less 
fickle  and  untrustworthy  as  an  ally  than  formidable  as  a  foe. 
She  could  have  no  guarantee  that  at  some  crisis  Frederick 
would  not  leave  her  in  the  lurch. 

Thus  between  1750  and  1755  only  one  real  change  in  the 
diplomatic  position  of  Europe  occurred.  This  was  the  Treaty 
of  Aranjuez  in  1752,  by  which  Austria  and  Spain  came  to 
terms  with  regard  to  Italy,  guaranteeing  the  existing  territorial 
conditions.  Naples,  Parma  and  Sardinia  adhered  to  this 
treaty,  and  thus  the  tranquillity  of  Italy  was  secured  for 
nearly  forty  years,  and  one  obstacle  in  the  way  of  Franco- 
Austrian  reconciliation  removed.1  But  the  Anglo-Austrian 


1  Ferdinand  vi,  under  the  influence  of  his  Queen,  Barbara  of  Portugal,  and  his 
chief  minister,  Wall,  an  Irish  refugee,  was  following  a  policy  of  peaceful  commercial 
and  industrial  development  and  had  more  or  less  broken  away  from  the  French 
alliance.  As  long  as  he  remained  on  the  throne,  Spain  was  neutral  in  the  Anglo- 
French  quarrel. 


1  755] 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION 


185 


alliance  was  growing  weaker.  While  Austria  complained 
bitterly  of  England’s  action  and  policy  in  the  late  war, 
especially  in  the  matter  of  Silesia,  which  had  been 
guaranteed  to  Prussia  by  the  Convention  of  Hanover, 
England  could  point  with  about  equal  justice  to  the  way  in 
which  Austria  had  neglected  the  defence  of  the  Netherlands. 
The  suppression  of  the  Ostend  Company 1  was  still  a  sore 
point  with  the  Hapsburgs,  and  England’s  refusal  in  1748  to 
have  the  Barrier  Treaty  abrogated  had  greatly  irritated  Maria 
Theresa :  she  now  refused  to  pay  the  annual  subsidy  due 
to  the  Dutch  or  to  repair  the  half-dismantled  fortresses. 
Moreover,  though  England  and  Hanover  had  supported  the 
candidature  of  the  Archduke  Joseph  for  King  of  the  Romans, 
Hanover  had  backed  up  the  claims  advanced  by  the  Elector 
Palatine  for  compensation  from  Austria  for  the  losses  he  had 
suffered  in  the  war.2  Thus,  altogether,  Maria  Theresa  though 
still  loyal  to  the  old  alliance,  felt  far  from  inclined  to  make 
any  sacrifices  and  run  any  risks  for  the  sake  of  England. 

It  was  when  matters  were  in  this  state  that  the  great 
quarrel  between  England  and  France  in  North  America  over 
the  valleys  of  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  and  all  that  their 
possession  involved  came  to  a  head  with  the  conflict  between 
the  French  and  Colonel  Washington’s  Virginian  militia  on  the 
Monongahela  (July  1754).  From  that  moment  the  two 
countries  drifted  steadily  into  war;  for  though  it  was  not  till 
nearly  two  years  later  that  the  formal  declaration  was  issued 
(May  1756),  hostilities  on  a  considerable  scale  began  with  the 
despatch  of  Braddock’s  expedition  in  January  1755*  That 
the  declaration  was  so  long  postponed  was  due  to  the  in¬ 
decision  and  irresolution  which  marked  the  proceedings  of 
both  home  governments. 

The  struggle  for  the  “hinterland”  of  the  North  American 
colonies  of  France  and  England  does  not  seem  at  first  sight  to 

1  Cf.  pp.  80-82. 

2  Conferences  were  held  at  Hanover  in  August  175°  t°  see  h°w  the  Archduke’s 
election  could  best  be  secured.  The  Electors  of  Bavaria  and  Cologne  took  the  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  demand  certain  financial  concessions  from  Austria,  while  Charles  Theodore 
of  Sulzbach,  Elector  Palatine,  claimed  territorial  indemnification.  Of  this  Austria 
would  not  hear,  since  Charles  Theodore  had  been  a  partisan  of  France.  Prussia 
then  refused  to  admit  that  a  mere  majority  among  the  Electors  wras  sufficient  for  the 
election  of  a  King  of  the  Romans.  France,  represented  by  Vergennes,  was  prepared 
to  support  Prussia  and,  after  dragging  on  for  two  years,  the  whole  negotiations  came 
to  an  utterly  inconclusive  end. 


1 86  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1755 


have  more  than  an  indirect  connection  with  the  affairs  of 
Germany.  The  issue  of  the  conflict  could  not,  of  course,  fail 
to  alter  the  balance  of  maritime  and  colonial  power,  and  to 
that  extent  must  affect  the  political  equilibrium  of  Europe,  but 
that  would  hardly  appear  enough  to  have  involved  Austria 
and  Prussia  in  the  war.  The  connecting  link  between  the 
Ohio  and  the  Oder  was  supplied  by  the  Personal  Union 
between  England  and  Planover,  and  by  the  fact  that  in 
Hanover  George  II  was  particularly  vulnerable.  In  Hanover 
he  could  be  attacked  by  the  French  Army  without  the  inter¬ 
position  of  the  guns  of  the  British  Navy  or  of  the  waves  of 
the  English  Channel,  and  at  this  time  the  French  Army  was 
sufficiently  influential  at  the  Court  of  Versailles  to  override 
any  arguments  which  the  Marine  Department  might  put 
forward  through  Machault  in  favour  of  making  the  war 
exclusively  naval.  Briefly  stated,  it  was  because  the  French 
Army  would  not  agree  to  the  neutralisation  of  Hanover,  which 
Frederick  urged  upon  them,  that  Frederick  came  to  terms  with 
England  and  agreed  to  defend  Hanover,  a  step  which  left 
France  no  alternative  but  to  come  to  terms  with  Austria,  if 
not  necessarily  to  commit  herself  to  assisting  Austria  to 
recover  Silesia.  It  was  the  French  who  tried  to  “conquer 
America  in  Germany,”  and  so  caused  Pitt  to  meet  them  and 
beat  them  with  their  own  weapons. 

From  the  very  first  it  was  obvious  that  unless  one  side  or  the 
other  would  give  way  over  the  American  quarrel — and  if  neither 
government  seemed  resolved  on  war,  neither  would  bring  itself  to 
make  the  necessary  concessions — France  would  attack  England 
through  Hanover.  George  II  therefore  set  about  providing  for 
the  defence  of  his  Electorate  in  the  old  way ;  he  sought  to 
obtain  the  help  of  Austria,  and  through  his  alliance  with  her 
to  hire  soldiers  from  those  minor  Princes  of  Germany  whose 
armies  were  always  at  the  disposal  of  the  highest  bidder.  He 
was  ready  to  make  an  agreement  with  Russia  for  the  purpose 
of  keeping  Prussia  in  check,  but  to  join  the  anti-Prussian 
coalition  was  rather  more  than  he  was  prepared  to  do. 

George  II  therefore  1  called  upon  Austria  to  fulfil  her  obli- 


1  It  is  rather  remarkable  to  notice  how  every  one  seems  to  have  assumed  that  in 
case  of  an  Anglo-French  war  the  first  step  France  would  take  would  be  an  invasion 
of  the  Austrian  Netherlands,  and  how  one  has  England  far  more  solicitous  about 
their  defence  than  is  their  own  ruler,  Maria  Theresa. 


1755] 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION 


I87 

gations  for  the  defence  of  the  Netherlands  and  in  June  1755 
the  Hanoverian  ministers  Miinchhausen  and  Steinberg  drew 
up  the  famous  “  Project  of  Herrenhausen,”  whose  failure  may 
be  taken  as  the  parting  of  the  ways  between  England  and 
Austria.  By  this  project  George  II  was  to  unite  with  Austria 
and  Saxony-Poland  to  maintain  an  army  for  the  defence  of 
Hanover,  Saxony  and  the  German  dominions  of  Austria :  this 
with  the  help  of  Russia  would  set  free  30,000  Austrians  to 
defend  the  Netherlands,  in  which  task  they  were  to  be  assisted 
by  6000  British  and  14,000  Bavarians  and  Hessians  in  British 
pay.  The  project,  however,  was  based  on  obtaining  the  requisite 
subsidies  from  the  British  Parliament,  and  it  was  here  that  it 
broke  down.  It  represented  George’s  policy  as  Elector  of 
Hanover,  and  the  refusal  of  Pitt  to  hear  of  so  indefinite  an 
extension  of  the  system  of  subsidies  caused  its  rejection  ;  a 
Hanoverian  policy,  in  fact,  was  sacrificed  to  the  wishes  of 
England. 

George  had  therefore  to  fall  back  on  such  definite  subsidy- 
treaties  as  he  could  get  Parliament  to  accept.  He  was  able  to 
arrange  for  12,000  Hessians,  and  he  also  suggested  that  if 
Austria  would  increase  her  forces  in  the  Netherlands  he  would 
make  a  treaty  with  her  ally  Russia.  Kaunitz  had  already 
(June)  offered  to  send  some  12,000  men  to  the  Netherlands 
if  England  would  take  her  share  in  their  defence ;  but  he  now 
(August)  flatly  refused  to  send  a  man,  alleging  that  the 
despatch  of  reinforcements  at  so  critical  a  moment  would 
merely  precipitate  war.  Austria,  indeed,  no  longer  stood  firm 
to  the  British  alliance,  she  was  ready  to  leave  the  Netherlands 
to  their  fate.  She  felt,  and  very  rightly,  as  Holland  did  also, 
that  the  American  question  was  not  a  matter  of  such  concern 
to  her  as  to  justify  her  in  involving  herself  in  a  war  with 
France.  With  Russia,  however,  George  was  more  successful, 
and  in  September  a  treaty  was  concluded  by  which  Elizabeth 
promised  to  provide  55,000  men  to  defend  Hanover  against 
either  the  French  or  Frederick. 

But  if  Frederick  II  had  no  great  love  for  England  or  for 
George  II  he  had  no  wish  at  so  critical  a  moment  in  his 
fortunes  to  let  his  French  alliance  involve  him  in  a  war  with 
England.  As  early  as  1753  the  treachery  of  one  Mentzel,  a 
clerk  in  the  Saxon  Chancery,  had  disclosed  to  him  the  secret 
articles  of  the  Treaty  of  1746,  and  he  knew  what  he  had  to 


1 88  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1755 


expect.  If  he  were  to  attack  Hanover  on  behalf  of  France,  it 
would  not  only  give  Austria  and  her  friends  the  opportunity 
they  wanted,  but  it  would  cause  England,  which  had  hitherto 
refused  to  furnish  Russia  with  the  subsidies  needed  for  the 
purposes  of  an  attack  on  Prussia,  to  definitely  array  herself  on 
the  anti-Prussian  side.  Nor  was  the  prospect  of  what  might 
happen  if  he  stood  neutral  while  France  attacked  Hanover 
much  more  promising.  His  relations  with  Russia  were  not 
such  as  to  make  him  welcome  the  introduction  of  55,000 
Muscovite  troops  into  the  heart  of  Germany  to  defend  Hanover 
against  a  French  attack.  He  therefore  urged  his  French  allies 
strongly  to  leave  Hanover  alone,  to  consent  to  its  being 
neutralised.  He  was  the  more  anxious  to  persuade  the 
French  not  to  attack  Hanover  because  to  reach  it  they  must 
cross  the  Westphalian  provinces  of  Prussia,  and  would 
probably  want  to  use  Wesel  and  the  other  Prussian  fortresses 
on  the  Rhine  as  their  base.  Keenly  awake  to  the  possibilities 
of  the  situation,  Frederick  now  began  to  cultivate  better  rela¬ 
tions  with  his  Hanoverian  cousins,  an  object  which  was  not 
a  little  advanced  by  a  visit  paid  by  his  sister,  the  Duchess  of 
Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel,  to  George  II  at  Hanover. 

His  overtures  were  well  received.  When  the  Austrians 
refused  to  send  troops  to  the  Netherlands  (Aug.),  Munch- 
haiisen  invited  the  good  offices  of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick 
towards  obtaining  a  promise  of  Prussian  neutrality  in  the  case 
of  a  French  attack  on  Hanover.  Frederick,  without  actually 
rejecting  these  overtures,  hastened  to  put  himself  in  com¬ 
munication  with  the  Court  of  Versailles,  asking  that  the  Due 
de  Nivernais,  a  friend  of  his  and  a  warm  partisan  of  the 
Franco-Prussian  alliance,  might  be  sent  to  Berlin  to  arrange 
matters.  The  French  Government,  however,  with  a  most 
culpable  negligence  and  indecision  did  nothing  to  make  sure 
of  Frederick’s  alliance.  They  still  hoped  that  the  American 
question  might  be  settled  without  war  and,  while  doing  little 
or  nothing  to  facilitate  a  peaceful  solution  by  keeping  their 
local  representatives  in  America  under  control,  they  were  still 
carrying  on  secret  negotiations  with  England. 

Unable  to  get  any  reply  from  France,  Frederick  did  not 
neglect  the  other  string  to  his  bow.  Through  the  Prussian 
Secretary  of  Legation  in  London,  P'rederick  became  aware  of 
the  definite  terms  of  the  Anglo-Russian  treaty  of  September, 


1755-6]  THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION 


189 

which  were  hardly  to  his  liking.  At  the  same  time  he  learnt 
that  the  proposed  Anglo-Prussian  treaty  of  neutrality  would 
give  him  satisfaction  in  the  case  of  some  Prussian  merchant¬ 
men  which  had  been  seized  in  the  late  war,  would  remove 
his  fears  as  to  Russia  and  renew  England’s  guarantee  of 
Silesia.  Accordingly  on  December  7th  he  gave  his  assent  to 
a  convention  which  took  the  shape  (Jan.  16th,  1756)  of  the 
Convention  of  Westminster.  By  this  most  important  treaty 
England  and  Prussia  expressed  their  desire  to  maintain  peace 
in  Germany  and  guaranteed  its  neutrality,  though  not  that  of 
the  Netherlands;  agreed  to  oppose  the  entrance  into  Germany 
or  the  passage  through  it  of  any  foreign  army  ;  and  guaranteed 
each  other’s  possessions. 

It  has  been  said  of  this  treaty  that  “  the  action  of 
Frederick  II  stung  the  supine  and  pacifically  disposed  Govern¬ 
ment  of  Louis  XV  into  taking  the  first  step  that  made  the 
second  inevitable.  .  .  .  The  anxiety  of  King  George  II  to 
safeguard  the  Hanoverian  frontier  was  the  final  cause  of  the 
Franco- Austrian  agreement.”1  To  describe  as  “pacifically 
disposed  ”  a  government  which,  like  that  of  Louis  xv,  was 
pursuing  “  a  policy  of  pin  pricks  ”  in  North  America,  seems 
hardly  accurate,  “  supine  ”  it  was  ;  but  surely  the  true  “  final 
cause  ”  of  the  Franco- Austrian  agreement,  of  the  special 
character  which  it  assumed  and  of  the  consequent  course  of 
the  war,  was  the  outvoting  of  those  in  France  who  were 
prepared  to  let  Hanover  be  neutralised  by  those  who  sought 
to  gain  compensation  for  losses  at  sea  and  in  the  colonies 
by  conquests  on  the  Weser,  in  a  word,  of  Machault  and  the 
Marine  Department,  by  the  more  influential  Army. 

The  true  character  of  the  Anglo-Prussian  agreement  may 
be  seen  from  the  fact  that  both  England  and  Prussia  regarded 
it  as  quite  in  keeping  with  their  existing  alliances.  England 
explained  it  to  Austria  as  a  step  towards  an  Austro-Prussian 
reconciliation.2  Frederick  continued  to  point  out  to  France 
the  advantages  to  her  in  her  maritime  war  of  the  neutralisation 
of  Germany.  This  was  not  the  light  in  which  France  regarded 
the  news,  which  arrived  almost  simultaneously  with  the  English 
rejection  of  the  French  ultimatum.  France  was  furious,  some- 

1  England  and  Hanover ,  p.  1 8 1 . 

2  The  exclusion  of  the  Netherlands  from  the  guarantee  of  neutrality  was  intended 
to  force  Austria  to  join  England  and  Prussia  against  France, 


190  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1755 


what  unreasonably,  for  she  only  had  herself  to  blame  for  it,  at 
her  ally’s  conclusion  of  a  treaty  with  her  enemy  behind  her 
back.  Frederick’s  behaviour  rather  than  the  terms  of  the 
treaty  infuriated  Louis  XV  and  his  ministers,  and  caused  them 
to  regard  with  favour  the  proposals  Austria  was  now  putting 
forward  again. 

When  the  Anglo-Austrian  negotiations  broke  down  in 
August  1755,  Kaunitz  had  revived  his  former  project  and  had 
suggested  through  Stahremberg  that  France  should  join  a 
great  coalition  to  be  formed  against  Frederick  for  the  double 
purpose  of  recovering  Silesia  for  Maria  Theresa  and  of  securing 
her  and  the  other  neighbours  of  Frederick  against  future  un¬ 
provoked  aggressions  on  his  part.  As  a  compensation,  France 
might  receive  a  rectification  of  her  frontier  towards  the 
Netherlands,  including  the  important  fortress  of  Mons,  the  rest 
of  the  Netherlands  might  go  to  Don  Philip  of  Parma  in 
return  for  the  reversion  to  Austria  of  his  Italian  duchy. 
Accordingly,  in  September  1755,  Stahremberg  and  the  Abbe 
Bernis  met  at  La  Babiole,  but  France,  while  quite  ready  for 
some  form  of  alliance  with  Austria,  was  not  prepared  to  do  all 
Austria  wanted.  A  counter-proposal  from  France  for  a 
guarantee  of  the  possessions  of  Austria,  France  and  Prussia, 
which  was  to  leave  France  free  to  attack  Hanover  while  Maria 
Theresa  was  to  prevent  Russia  hiring  out  her  troops  for  the 
defence  of  Hanover,  was  not  at  all  what  Austria  desired. 
Matters  were  lingering  on  and  a  decision  seemed  distant,  when 
the  conclusion  of  the  Convention  of  Westminster  revolutionised 
the  situation.  Austria  was  still  negotiating  with  Keith  while 
France  had  recalled  Nivernais  from  Berlin,  so  she  had  now 
the  trump  card  in  the  alternative  of  an  alliance  with  England 
and  Prussia :  the  French  ministry  would  have  only  had 
their  own  indecision  to  thank  if  England  had  united  Austria 
and  Prussia  in  a  great  continental  coalition  against  France.  It 
was  therefore  France  which  was  the  keener  on  concluding  a 
treaty  and  from  whom  concessions  must  come. 

The  negotiations  were  long,  intricate  and  delicate,  neither 
quite  liking  to  break  with  an  old  ally.  At  last  Austria  promised 
that  if  France  would  take  active  measures  against  Prussia,  she 
would  on  obtaining  Silesia  and  Glatz  take  similar  steps  against 
England.  At  a  meeting  of  the  French  ministry  a  defensive 
treaty  on  these  lines  was  agreed  upon  as  a  preliminary  to  a 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION 


191 


US6] 

closer  union.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  Belleisle,  the 
Comte  d’Argenson  and  the  rest  of  the  military  party  in  France 
were  so  far  from  regarding  this  decision  as  bellicose  that  they 
opposed  it  steadily,  fearing  that  it  would  secure  peace  and  so 
prevent  the  French  army  from  seeing  service  on  the  Continent.1 

The  first  treaty  of  Versailles,  which  was  concluded  on  May 
1st,  1756,  included  three  things:  a  Convention  of  Neutrality,  a 
Defensive  Alliance  and  a  Secret  Convention.  The  first  pledged 
Maria  Theresa  to  neutrality  in  the  Anglo-French  war,  Louis  XV 
binding  himself  to  respect  the  Netherlands  frontier  in  attack¬ 
ing  Hanover.  The  Defensive  Alliance  was  the  most  im¬ 
portant  section  of  the  treaty.  Both  parties  agreed  to  uphold 
the  Peace  of  Westphalia  and  other  treaties  since  concluded 
between  them,  guaranteed  each  other’s  actual  possessions  in 
Europe  against  attack,  except  as  regarded  the  Anglo-French 
war  already  in  progress,  and  promised  to  assist  each 
other,  if  attacked  by  a  third  party,  with  24,000  men  or 
an  equivalent  in  money.  Finally,  the  Secret  Convention 
promised  Maria  Theresa’s  aid  to  Louis  should  any  Power 
attack  French  territory  as  an  ally  of  England,  Louis  under¬ 
taking  a  parallel  obligation.  It  also  declared  the  Emperor 
(for  Tuscany),  Naples,  Parma,  Spain,  or  any  other  Power  whose 
adhesion  might  be  considered  desirable,  to  be  eligible  for 
admission  to  the  alliance ;  and  both  signatories  agreed  not  to 
make  any  fresh  treaty  without  communication  with  the  other 
party. 

Such  was  the  famous  treaty  of  May  1st,  1756.  That  it 
was  more  to  the  advantage  of  Austria  than  of  France  is  not  to 
be  denied  ;  she  was  not  involved  in  the  war  against  England 
which  France  pledged  herself  to  continue  as  long  as  Austria  and 
Prussia  were  at  war,  and  France  was  only  to  receive  her  com¬ 
pensation  when  Austria  had  regained  Silesia  and  Glatz.2  It  was 
probably  the  ever-present  fear  that  England  might  in  the  end 
unite  Austria,  Prussia  and  Russia,  an  unlikely  but  not  impossible 
alliance  for  which  Newcastle  was  still  hoping,  which  induced 
Bernis  to  recede  in  this  way  from  his  demand  for  reciprocity. 
Shortly  before  the  conclusion  of  the  treaty,  Maria  Theresa  had 
the  satisfaction  of  hearing  from  St.  Petersburg  that  Elizabeth 
would  accede  to  the  Franco-Austrian  alliance,  and  would 
contribute  80,000  troops  to  the  attack  on  Prussia,  promis- 
1  Waddington,  i.  329.  2  E.H.R.  (1898),  p.  793* 


192  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1756 


ing  to  continue  the  war  until  Maria  Theresa  had  regained 
Silesia  and  Glatz.  In  the  partition  of  the  Prussian  dominions, 
East  Prussia  was  to  go  to  Poland,  which  would  in  return  cede 
Courland  to  Russia ;  Magdeburg  was  to  fall  to  the  lot  of 
Saxony,  Pomerania  to  Sweden.1 

For  France  the  treaty  was  the  first  step  on  a  path  which 
was  to  lead  to  humiliation  and  defeat,  to  loss  of  prestige  and 
of  position,  which  was  to  bring  her  appreciably  nearer  the 
Revolution ;  but  it  does  not  necessarily  follow  that  the  treaty 
was  a  mistake.  In  the  first  place,  nothing  can  be  clearer  than 
the  fact  that  the  object  of  the  French  ministry  in  concluding 
this  treaty  was  to  secure  the  peace  of  Europe,  to  administer  a 
snub  to  Frederick  and  show  him  plainly  that  he  was  by  no 
means  indispensable  to  France.  That  the  French  guarantee 
would  prove  insufficient  to  keep  Prussia  quiet  never  crossed  the 
minds  of  Rouille  and  his  colleagues.  In  the  meantime  they 
hoped  in  the  negotiations  for  a  closer  alliance  which  were  now 
to  be  set  on  foot  to  obtain  concessions  in  the  Netherlands  for 
France  and  for  Don  Philip  as  the  price  not  of  French  aid  to 
Maria  Theresa’s  anti-Prussian  schemes,  but  of  French  neutrality. 
To  Frederick  and  to  the  other  Courts  of  Europe  who  were  un¬ 
aware  of  the  impending  developments  of  the  treaty  it  appeared 
that  all  that  France  was  doing  was  to  secure  herself  against 
continental  complications  which  could  divert  her  attention 
from  the  colonial  and  naval  war.  Indeed,  had  not  Frederick 
by  his  unexpected  attack  on  Saxony  provided  the  casus  foederis 
of  the  third  clause  of  the  Defensive  Alliance  and  of  the  first  of 
the  Secret  Convention,  it  is  at  least  doubtful  whether  France 
would  have  been  among  his  immediate  opponents. 

That  France  and  Austria  were  throwing  over  their 
traditional  policy  is  undeniable;  but  Austria  had  not  found 
England  so  satisfactory  an  ally  in  the  matter  of  Silesia  that 
it  was  not  to  her  advantage  to  discard  the  old  alliance  for  a 
new  and  more  promising  combination.  France  also  had  more 
to  fear  from  England  and  from  Prussia  than  from  Austria. 
There  was  no  necessary  hostility  between  Bourbon  and 
Hapsburg :  it  was  as  a  stronger  Power  whose  strength  threat¬ 
ened  her  independence  that  France  had  first  fought  Austria 

1  Cf.  von  Arneth,  v.  46.  The  best  account  of  these  negotiations  is  that  given 
in  M.  Waddington’s  Louis  xv  et  le  Renversement  des  Alliances ,  especially  chs. 
v.-viii. 


U56] 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION 


193 


and  no  one  could  say  now  that  France  was  in  any  danger 
from  a  Hapsburg  preponderance.  Nor  had  the  results  of  the 
policy  of  1741  been  such  as  to  encourage  France  to  adhere  to 
her  alliance  with  a  monarch  so  regardless  of  anything  but  his 
own  interests  as  was  Frederick.  The  real  causes  of  the  French 
disasters  lay  not  in  putting  an  end  to  an  obsolete  traditional 
policy,  but  in  making  the  war  continental  by  persisting  in  the 
attack  on  Hanover- — but  for  which  France  need  never  have 
exceeded  the  limits  of  the  assistance  to  which  she  pledged  her¬ 
self  in  1756 — in  allowing  Austrian  interests  to  direct  the  war, 
and  above  all,  in  the  utter  inefficiency  of  Army,  Navy  and 
government  which  the  war  displayed,  and  of  which  neither  it 
nor  the  treaty  was  the  cause. 


13 


CHAPTER  XI 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR 

TO  THE  END  OF  1757 

BUT  it  was  not  only  Maria  Theresa  who  had  been  turning 
to  good  use  the  years  of  peace  since  Aix-la-Chapelle. 
Frederick  II  had  never  deluded  himself  with  the  belief  that  he 
could  count  on  the  undisturbed  enjoyment  of  Silesia ;  he  knew 
that  he  must  be  prepared  to  make  good  his  title  to  it  by  the 
means  by  which  he  had  acquired  it,  and  one  of  the  chief 
reasons  for  his  readiness  to  make  peace  in  December  1745 
was  that  he  was  then  at  the  end  of  his  resources,  and  im¬ 
peratively  needed  a  period  of  rest  and  recuperation.  During 

the  peace  he  had  introduced  many  reforms,  in  the  administra¬ 
tion,  in  finance,  in  the  domestic  economy  of  the  kingdom,  in 
the  judicial  system.1  The  burden  of  taxation  had  hardly 
been  lightened  in  the  least;  but  while  money  had  flowed 
freely  into  his  depleted  treasury,  the  strictest  economy  had 
been  practised,  and  in  1 7  5  6  he  had  a  reserve  fund  of 
eighteen  million  thalers.  Even  more  important  were  the 

measures  which  he  had  taken  to  increase  and  improve  the 

army  with  which  the  very  existence  of  the  Prussian  kingdom 
was  so  closely  bound  up.  To  increase  it  was  his  first  object,  and 
by  1756  it  mustered  155,000  men.  Garrison  duty  absorbed 
27,000  of  these;  for  the  repairing  and  strengthening  of  many 
fortresses,  especially  in  the  newly-acquired  Silesia,  had  made  a 
considerable  increase  in  the  garrison-battalions  necessary.  The 
rest,  126  battalions  and  210  squadrons,  formed  a  highly 
efficient  field  army,  which  an  iron  discipline,  a  careful  training 
on  the  parade-ground  and  in  the  manoeuvres  and  camps  of  exer¬ 
cises  which  were  held  every  year  had  made  a  force  even  more 
formidable  than  that  which  Frederick  William  had  bequeathed 
to  his  son.  In  staff  work,  in  organisation,  in  preparations  for 

1  Cf.  Chapter  XIV. 


194 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


195 


i756] 

mobilisation,  great  improvements  had  been  made.  No  efforts 
had  been  spared  to  collect  vast  reserves  of  clothing,  weapons, 
provisions  and  military  stores  of  every  kind.  But  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  it  was  not  even  more  to  the  King  and 
commander  than  to  the  soldiers  that  these  years  were  so 
useful.  There  was  not  the  same  room  for  improvement  in 
the  Prussian  army  as  there  was  in  its  commander.  Frederick 
had  learnt  a  good  deal  about  the  art  of  war  on  the  battlefields 
of  Bohemia  and  Silesia,  and  he  devoted  the  peace  to  a  careful 
study  of  the  profession  of  arms.  It  was  now  that  he  devised 
and  worked  out  the  system  of  attacking  in  oblique  order, 
which  was  to  win  so  conspicuous  a  triumph  at  Leuthen.  Many 
of  the  greatest  qualities  of  a  general  he  already  possessed, 
resolution,  decision,  a  readiness  to  take  risks,  promptitude, 
tenacity,  unbounded  self-confidence ;  but  it  was  in  handling 
large  masses  of  men  in  the  manoeuvres  that  he  learnt  to  really 
understand  his  weapon,  on  the  drill-ground  that  he  was  able 
to  test  and  improve  his  system  of  tactics,  in  peace  that  he 
prepared  for  war. 

As  has  been  already  explained,  Frederick  did  not  regard 
the  Convention  of  Westminster  as  a  complete  breach  with 
France,  and  still  expected  her  to  agree  to  the  neutralisation  of 
Germany.  Even  the  negotiations  between  France  and  Austria 
caused  him  no  anxiety ;  for  he,  like  his  minister  Knyphaiisen, 
looked  upon  them  as  merely  intended  to  secure  the  neutrality 
of  the  Netherlands.  The  movements  of  the  Austrian  and 
Russian  troops,  however,  were  of  a  character  to  arouse  his  sus¬ 
picions,  and  when  on  June  22nd  he  received  from  his  minister 
at  Dresden,  Maltzahn,  a  copy  obtained  by  Mentzel  of  a  despatch 
from  Fleming,  the  Saxon  representative  at  St.  Petersburg,  to 
Count  Briihl,  speaking  openly  of  Russia’s  hostile  intentions 
towards  Prussia,  he  saw  at  once  that  war  was  inevitable.1 
The  mobilisation  of  the  army  began  at  once,  and,  in 
opposition  to  the  advice  of  Podewils  and  of  Prince  Henry, 
Count  Klinggraeffen,  the  Prussian  envoy  at  Vienna,  was 
instructed  to  lay  before  Maria  Theresa  a  request  for  an  ex¬ 
planation  of  the  movements  of  her  armies  (July  26th).  Maria 
Theresa’s  reply  led  Frederick  to  present  an  ultimatum 
(Aug.  20th),  pressing  for  more  explicit  explanations,  and  for 
a  definite  statement  that  she  did  not  mean  to  attack  him 

1  Cf.  Frederick’s  letter  to  Wilhelmina  of  Baireuth,  June  22nd,  1756. 


196  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1756 


either  that  year  or  in  the  coming  year.  Maria  Theresa 
answered  that  no  offensive  alliance  against  Prussia  was  in 
existence,  and  she  threw  upon  Frederick  all  the  responsibility 
for  the  armaments  and  for  the  military  precautions  she  had 
been  forced  to  take.  On  August  2  5  th,  Frederick  received  this 
answer;  on  the  26th  he  instructed  Maltzahn  to  demand  from 
the  Elector  of  Saxony  free  passage  through  his  dominions  for 
the  Prussian  troops  on  their  way  to  Bohemia;  on  the  28th  he 
left  Berlin,  and  on  the  29th  he  crossed  the  Saxon  frontier. 

That  in  thus  acting  Frederick  was  only  anticipating  attack 
is  true ;  there  was  a  design  on  foot  for  a  great  coalition  against 
Prussia,  even  if  it  was  still  in  an  inchoate  condition  ;  but  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  he  might  not  have  gained  more  by 
waiting  to  be  attacked  ;  he  threw  away  the  moral  advantage 
of  being  the  defender  and  failed  to  achieve  the  military  results 
he  had  hoped  to  win  by  adopting  the  offensive.  And  by 
attacking  Bohemia  through  Saxony  he  enabled  Maria  Theresa 
to  call  upon  France  to  fulfil  her  treaty  obligations,  and  made 
it  impossible  for  France  to  remain  neutral.  But  for  this  he 
might  not  have  had  to  reckon  with  more  than  the  malevolent 
neutrality  of  France.  Unless  Frederick  gained  very  striking 
military  successes,  unless  he  was  able  to  destroy  the  coalition 
against  him  before  it  could  really  get  to  work,  the  moral  and 
diplomatic  advantage  to  Maria  Theresa  of  being  able  to  point 
once  again  to  the  unwarrantable  aggressions  of  her  ambitious 
neighbour  would  be  enormous. 

It  would  appear  that  in  taking  the  offensive  Frederick 
calculated — not  without  good  reason — upon  an  easy  success 
over  the  weak  and  not  very  efficient  Saxon  army.1  After 
obtaining  military  possession  of  Saxony  he  would  press  on 
into  Bohemia,  and  hoped  to  dictate  a  peace  under  the  walls 
of  Vienna  which  would  leave  Saxony  in  his  possession  and 
compensate  Augustus  III  with  Bohemia.2  Nor  were  the 
prospects  unpromising.  He  had  for  his  main  army  some 
70,000  men,3  who  converged  upon  the  Saxon  capital  from 
Halle  through  Leipzig  and  Chemnitz,  straight  up  the  Elbe  by 
Torgau  and  from  Lusatia,  while  an  independent  corps  under 
Schwerin,  27,000  strong,  entered  Bohemia  by  Glatz  and 

1  Though  50,000  strong  on  paper,  it  was  much  below  strength  ;  and  with  some 
regiments  absent  in  Poland,  the  available  force  was  hardly  20,000. 

2  Cf.  Waddington,  i.  521-533.  3  101  squadrons  and  67  battalions. 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


197 


i756] 

Nachod,  moving  on  Koniggratz.  On  paper  Austria  should 
have  had  in  Bohemia  and  Moravia  nearly  90,000  men  to 
oppose  to  the  invaders ;  but  many  corps  had  not  yet  arrived, 
and  others  were  below  strength,  so  that  the  force  which  General 
Browne  collected  at  Kolin  at  the  end  of  August  only  mustered 
7000  horse  and  25,000  foot,  while  Piccolomini  in  Moravia 
had  no  more  than  22,000  men,  5000  being  cavalry.  The 
Austrian  mobilisation  was  very  far  from  complete,  which  may 
be  taken  as  evidence  that  no  immediate  attack  on  Prussia  had 
been  intended,  and  at  so  late  a  season  no  help  could  be 
expected  from  France  or  Russia. 

When  Frederick  crossed  the  Saxon  frontier  Augustus  at 
first  offered  to  be  neutral  and  to  hand  over  certain  fortresses  as 
a  guarantee;  but  this  did  not  satisfy  Frederick  who  demanded 
also  that  the  Saxon  army  should  be  incorporated  in  his  own, 
or  at  least  disarmed.  Augustus  would  not  agree  to  this,  and  it 
was  decided  to  make  a  stand  in  the  strong  position  of  Pirna, 
where  the  Saxon  army  had  been  collected.  The  only 
alternative  was  a  retreat  into  Bohemia  for  which  Augustus 
was  hardly  prepared,  as  he  feared  Frederick  would  take  the 
opportunity  to  annex  the  Electorate.  By  the  middle  of 
September,  therefore,  the  Saxons  were  surrounded  in  the  Pirna 
position,  and  Frederick,  who  had  not  expected  anything  of  the 
sort,  found  his  plans  for  the  invasion  of  Bohemia  suspended. 
He  could  not  move  on  and  leave  the  Saxons  unmasked  in  his 
rear,  while  if  he  left  behind  a  force  sufficient  to  contain 
the  Saxons,  he  would  not  be  strong  enough  to  besiege  Prague 
or  undertake  any  similar  operation.  The  unexpected  action  of 
the  Saxons  therefore  disarranged  his  whole  plan  ;  and  had  not 
Augustus  and  Brtihl  neglected  to  make  an  adequate  provision 
of  food  and  other  supplies,  so  that  the  Saxons  were  unable  to 
hold  out  till  an  Austrian  army  strong  enough  to  effect  their 
release  could  be  collected,  the  invasion  of  Saxony  might  have 
ended  disastrously  for  Frederick.  The  Saxon  camp,  protected 
by  a  brook  and  marsh  in  its  front,  resting  on  the  Elbe  and  on 
the  strong  fortresses  of  Lilienstein  and  Konigstein  and  well 
fortified,  would  have  been  almost  impossible  to  storm.  But 
that  the  inefficiency  of  the  Saxon  government  displayed  itself 
in  the  collection  of  supplies  for  four  weeks  only  instead  of  four 
months,  the  sudden  resolve  of  Augustus  to  stand  at  Pirna 
might  have  been  attended  by  complete  success. 


198  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1756 


As  things  were,  General  Browne,  an  able  officer  of  Irish 
birth  who  commanded  the  Austrian  forces  in  Bohemia,  had 
only  a  very  short  time  in  which  to  effect  the  relief.  Though 
inferior  in  force  to  the  Prussians,  and  hardly  prepared  for 
instant  action,  he  did  not  hesitate  but  pushed  forward  to  Budin 
on  the  Eger  to  see  if  he  could  get  into  touch  with  the  Saxons 
(Sept.  29th). 

Frederick  had  already  pushed  Marshal  Keith  forward  into 
Bohemia  with  a  covering  force,  which  had  driven  an  Austrian 
detachment  out  of  Aussig  (Sept.  1 3th) ;  and  on  hearing  of 
Browne’s  advance  he  moved  up  and  joined  Keith  (Sept.  29th), 
leaving  some  40,000  men  to  blockade  Pirna.  On  the  30th, 
Browne,  who  had  had  to  wait  for  his  guns  and  pontoons, 
moved  from  Budin  to  Lobositz,  the  Prussians  also  moving 
forward  and  occupying  the  hills  of  Lobosch  and  Homolka,  just 
North  of  Lobositz,  the  same  day.  On  the  morning  of  October  1  st 
the  Croats,  pushing  out  from  Lobositz,  found  the  Prussians  in 
position. 

The  two  forces  were  of  nearly  equal  strength,1  but  in 
position  the  Prussians  had  an  advantage,  holding  the  hills  on 
either  side  of  the  road  from  Lobositz  to  Welmina,  while  the 
Austrian  right  in  and  around  Lobositz  was  cut  off  from  the 
centre  and  left,  which  were  behind  the  Morell  Brook.  The 
battle  began  with  an  advance  of  the  Prussian  cavalry  in 
the  centre  ;  but  though  at  first  successful  they  were  repulsed 
by  the  heavy  fire  of  the  Austrian  infantry  and  of  the  guns 
behind  the  Morell  Brook.  Their  supports  then  joined  them, 
but  were  charged  and  routed  by  the  Austrian  cavalry.  Browne 
now  reinforced  his  right,  and  sent  it  forward  against  the  hill 
of  Lobosch ;  but  Frederick  parried  this  stroke  by  bringing  up 
the  second  line  of  his  right,  which  he  could  safely  do  as  the 
Morell  Brook  covered  that  wing  from  a  counter-attack  by  the 
Austrian  left.  There  was  a  sharp  struggle  for  the  Lobosch- 
berg ;  but  on  the  fall  of  their  commander,  Lacy,  the  Austrians 
gave  way  and  retired  through  Lobositz,  which  the  Prussians 
occupied.  Beyond  that  they  did  not  attempt  to  press  their 
advantage,  for  Browne’s  centre  and  left  were  still  intact,  and 
his  force  drew  off  in  excellent  order,  falling  back  next  day  to 

1  The  Austrians  had  34  battalions  of  infantry  to  29,  and  were  equal  in  cavalry, 
each  side  having  70  squadrons ;  but  the  Prussian  establishments  were  rather 
higher. 


1 756] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


199 


Budin.  Inasmuch  as  they  had  checked  Browne’s  advance 
on  Pirna  and  had  forced  him  to  evacuate  Lobositz,  the 
Prussians  could  claim  the  victory;  but  their  losses,  3300  all 
told,  somewhat  exceeded  the  Austrian,  2300  killed  and 
wounded  and  700  prisoners,  and  they  had  had  to  fight  very 
hard  for  their  success.  Frederick  could  not  but  realise  that 
he  had  a  different  enemy  to  deal  with  than  the  comparatively 
inefficient  Austrian  army  of  1741  — 1745. 

Browne’s  check  had  by  no  means  been  fatal  to  the  relief 
of  Pirna.  He  had,  on  the  contrary,  drawn  off  Frederick  and  a 
large  part  of  his  army  and  thereby  reduced  the  pressure ;  and 
on  October  6th  he  started  off  with  8000  picked  men,  and 
by  forced  marches  by  Kamnitz  and  Schluckenau  reached 
Mitteldorf,  only  three  miles  from  Schandau,  on  the  afternoon 
of  the  11th.  Had  the  Saxons  been  ready  to  co-operate 
promptly  and  to  take  advantage  of  the  helping  hand  Browne 
thus  held  out,  the  greater  part  of  their  army  might  have  got 
away ;  but  the  pontoons  were  in  the  wrong  place,  much  time 
was  wasted,  and  when  at  last  the  crossing  began  (11.30  p.m. 
Oct.  1  2th)  every  possible  mistake  was  made.  The  utmost  con¬ 
fusion  prevailed,  the  camp  was  evacuated  too  soon,  the  crossing 
was  not  properly  covered  against  attacks  in  rear.  Moreover, 
the  delay  had  allowed  Winterfeldt  to  reinforce  the  division 
facing  Browne ;  and  when,  about  4  o’clock  next  afternoon, 
(13th)  the  bridge  broke  down  the  Saxon  army  found  itself 
cooped  up  between  Lilienstein  and  the  Elbe  in  a  position 
commanded  by  Prussian  cannon,  and  from  which  all  the  exits 
were  blocked  by  Prussian  troops.  To  persist  was  hopeless, 
surrender  was  inevitable,  and  very  reluctantly  Augustus  had  to 
agree.  He  himself  managed  to  get  away  to  Warsaw,  but 
nearly  18,000  troops  had  to  lay  down  their  arms  (Oct.  16th). 
Browne,  who  had  done  his  share,  held  on  at  Lichtenhayn  till 
late  on  the  14th,  but  then  finding  that  the  crossing  had  failed 
had  no  alternative  but  to  retire.  By  October  20th  he  was  back 
at  Budin. 

Thus  Frederick  obtained  possession  of  Saxony,  which 
he  proceeded  to  mulct  in  large  sums  of  money,  besides 
forcing  his  Saxon  prisoners  to  enlist  in  his  army ; 1  but  the 

1  They  took  the  first  opportunity  to  desert,  as  the  dislike  for  the  Prussians  in 
Saxony  was  very  strong.  By  February  over  2500  had  gone  over  to  Austria,  and 
early  in  the  next  year  three  whole  regiments  deserted  and  made  their  way  to  Poland. 


200  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1756 


comparative  success  obtained  at  Pirna  and  Lobositz  must 
not  hide  the  fact  that  Frederick’s  plans  as  a  whole  had 
failed.  The  resistance  of  the  Saxons  had  saved  Bohemia  by 
detaining  Frederick  until  Browne  had  time  to  get  his  army 
together.  By  the  time  Pirna  fell  it  was  too  late  to  attempt 
another  move.  The  Prussians  from  Lobositz  were  back  in 
Saxony  by  October  28th,  and  Schwerin,  who  had  been  held  in 
check  at  Koniggratz  by  Piccolomini’s  inferior  force,  retired  to 
Silesia. 

To  trace  in  detail  the  complicated  negotiations  between 
Austria  and  her  French  and  Russian  allies  which  filled  the 
winter  of  1756— 1757  would  be  an  endless  task.  What  is 
quite  clear,  however,  is  that  Maria  Theresa  took  a  very 
different  view  of  the  aims  of  the  treaty  of  May  175b  from 
that  held  at  Versailles.  While  France  was  by  no  means 
pleased  with  the  subordinate  part  which  the  strict  fulfilment 
of  that  treaty  would  have  assigned  to  her,  and  was  anxious  to 
put  her  whole  force  into  the  field  against  Hanover,  Maria 
Theresa  would  have  been  quite  content  with  the  punctual 
execution  of  the  obligations  France  had  then  assumed,  with 
the  despatch  of  an  auxiliary  corps  by  the  Danube  to  Bohemia 
or  Moravia.  She  was  very  anxious  to  avoid  making  the  war 
general,  lest  she  should  give  the  appearance  of  truth  to  the 
accusations  Frederick  hurled  at  her,  that  she  was  introducing 
the  French  into  the  Empire  and  involving  all  Germany  in  war. 
She  did  not  wish  to  do  anything  to  alarm  Holland  or  the 
Protestant  Powers  of  North  Germany,  and  would  have  been 
glad  if  it  had  been  possible  to  neutralise  Hanover ;  for,  as  she 
pointed  out  to  the  French  ministers,  she  had  no  quarrel  with 
England  and  was  not  concerned  in  the  quarrel  over  America, 
which  was  altogether  distinct  from  the  treaty  into  which 
France  and  Austria  had  entered  for  the  recovery  of  Silesia  and 
the  debasement  of  Prussia — an  end,  she  hinted,  quite  as  much 
to  be  desired  by  France  as  by  Austria.  France,  she  pointed 
out,  was  definitely  pledged  to  assist  Austria  at  the  time  that 
Frederick’s  attack  on  Saxony  provided  a  casus  belli ;  Austria 
had  undertaken  no  such  obligations  towards  the  war  which 
had  previously  broken  out  in  America. 

Thus,  though  at  the  outset  France,  irritated  by  Frederick’s 
attack  on  Saxony  in  defiance  of  her  guarantee,  prepared  to 
send  the  24,000  men  according  to  the  treaty,  and  began 


i756'7] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


201 


collecting  them  at  Metz,  by  October  2nd  Stahremberg  was 
writing  to  announce  that  the  despatch  of  the  auxiliary  corps 
had  been  postponed  for  the  present.  France,  indeed,  had  no 
wish  to  confine  herself  to  the  despatch  of  these  auxiliaries  so 
far  afield  as  Moravia,  where  they  would  be  out  of  her  control, 
and  would  not  be  available  for  her  designs  on  Hanover.  She 
therefore  prepared  to  take  the  field  on  a  much  larger  scale,  and 
d’Estrees  was  sent  off  to  Vienna  to  arrange  a  scheme  of 
operations. 

It  would  appear  that  d’Argenson,  Rouille,  Paris-Duverney, 
and  their  friends  opposed  the  idea  of  playing  a  merely 
secondary  role  in  the  German  war,  because  they  feared  that  if 
they  did  this  the  war  would  be  indefinitely  protracted ;  their 
idea  was  to  seize  Hanover  as  a  set-off  against  possible  losses 
in  the  colonies,  and  then  to  operate  on  the  Middle  Elbe  against 
Frederick  in  conjunction  with  the  Austrians  from  Bohemia. 
As  the  first  step,  they  proposed  to  assemble  an  army  of 
observation  on  the  Lower  Rhine.  However,  they  did  consent 
that  Austria  should  attempt  to  negotiate  the  neutrality  of 
Hanover,  an  idea  which  had  been  mooted  by  the  Hanoverian 
ministers  as  early  as  September  1756,  and  upon  which  Maria 
Theresa,  anxious  to  prevent  Frederick  from  identifying  his 
cause  with  that  of  the  North  German  Protestants,  was  keenly 
set.  Hanover,  indeed,  was  anti-Prussian,  and  would  gladly 
have  come  to  terms  with  the  Empress ;  and  England,  though 
she  did  not  intend  to  desert  Frederick,  would  have  liked  to 
escape  from  the  necessity  of  undertaking  the  defence  of 
Hanover.  But  the  proposal  to  extend  the  neutrality  of 
Hanover  to  Brunswick  and  to  Hesse-Cassel,  practically  to 
establish  a  line  of  demarcation  which  the  French  troops 
would  have  to  respect,  broke  down  when  the  French  held 
out  for  transitus  innoxius — in  other  words,  freedom  to  use  this 
neutral  sphere  for  an  attack  on  Prussia. 

A  great  deal  also  turned  on  the  question  of  “  reciprocity  ” ; 
when  and  on  what  conditions  was  Maria  Theresa  to  hand  over 
the  Netherlands  to  France  or  to  Don  Philip  ?  Austria  was  afraid 
of  alarming  England  and  the  United  Provinces,  France 
wanted  to  force  on  a  complete  breach  between  Austria  and 
her  old  ally.  Despatch  after  despatch  passed  between  Vienna 
and  Versailles.  On  February  21st,  Maria  Theresa  wrote  to 
Stahremberg  declaring  her  readiness  to  hand  over  the  Nether- 


202  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


lands  on  getting  back  Silesia  and  Glatz  even  if  Frederick  were 
no  further  reduced,  while  as  the  hopes  of  neutralising  Hanover 
faded  away,  the  idea  of  localising  the  war  became  more  and 
more  impossible  of  realisation.  Finally,  exactly  a  year  after 
the  conclusion  of  the  First  Treaty,  the  Second  Treaty  of 
Versailles  was  signed  on  May  1st,  1757.  France  promised 
to  send  to  Maria  Theresa’s  aid  24,000  French  troops  as 
auxiliaries,  with  10,000  subsidised  South  Germans,  also  to  put 
105,000  men  into  the  field  on  her  own  account.  She  also 
agreed  to  pay  1  2  million  gulden  a  year,  in  monthly  instalments, 
and  not  to  make  peace  till  Austria’s  possession  of  Silesia  and 
Glatz  had  been  admitted  by  Frederick  and  his  allies. 
Austria’s  contingent  was  to  be  80,000  men  ;  she  was  to  hand 
over  Ostend  and  Nieuport  to  France  as  a  security  when  the 
first  instalment  of  the  subsidy  was  paid,  to  hand  over 
Mons,  Ypres  and  several  other  towns  on  obtaining  Silesia  and 
Glatz,  and  to  give  the  rest  of  the  Netherlands  to  Don  Philip 
when  the  proposed  partition  of  Prussia  should  have  taken 
place.  By  this  Halberstadt,  Halle  and  Magdeburg  were  to  go 
to  Saxony,  Sweden  was  to  recover  the  portion  of  Pomerania 
lost  in  1720,  Cleves  and  Guelders  to  be  divided  between  the 
United  Provinces  and  the  Elector  Palatine  should  they  join 
the  Coalition ;  Crossen  was  to  be  added  to  Maria  Theresa’s 
share.  Louis  XV  promised  to  use  his  influence  to  get  Joseph 
elected  King  of  the  Romans,  while  the  treaty  also  included 
several  less  important  clauses  relating  to  Italy. 

As  finally  arranged,  the  treaty  was  greatly  in  Maria 
Theresa’s  favour,  for  France  had  given  way  on  several  points, 
notably  with  regard  to  the  payment  of  the  subsidies.  But  it 
does  not  therefore  follow  that  it  represented  a  complete 
triumph  for  Austrian  interests  over  French.  Probably  France 
would  have  been  better  advised  had  she  confined  herself  to 
the  despatch  of  the  24,000  auxiliaries  ;  but  it  was  rather  in  the 
practical  execution  of  the  policy  than  in  the  policy  itself  that 
she  was  to  do  herself  so  much  damage.  Maria  Theresa  must, 
of  course,  answer  the  charge  of  having  so  far  sacrificed  the 
Empire  to  her  own  ends  that  she  was  introducing  French 
armies  into  the  heart  of  Germany  to  compass  the  destruction 
of  a  leading  German  state.  Yet  it  was  not  as  much  as 
Frederick  had  done  when  he  accepted  French  aid  in  1741  ; 
and  there  was  no  small  difference  between  Maria  Theresa’s 


1757] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


203 


action  in  invoking  French  help  to  enable  her  to  recover  a 
province  wrested  from  her  by  force,  and  Frederick’s  in  calling 
in  France  in  support  of  a  policy  of  pure  aggression.  Maria 
Theresa’s  action  was  retributive,  if  not  indeed  defensive — after 
her  experience  in  1741  no  one  can  blame  her  if  she  felt 
insecure  as  long  as  Frederick  was  free  to  act  as  he  pleased. 

Simultaneously  with  the  Franco-Austrian  negotiations 
similar  negotiations  were  going  on  between  Austria  and 
Russia.  Here  Esterhazy,  the  Austrian  Ambassador,  found 
himself  opposed  by  the  Chancellor  Bestuchev  who,  if  not  fond 
of  Prussia,  was  now  in  the  pay  of  England  ;2  while  Woronzov 
the  Vice-Chancellor  inclined  to  favour  Prussia,  but  was  open 
to  conviction.  Olsuviev,  the  other  influential  minister,  was 
frankly  for  Austria.  In  Russia  as  in  France  the  news  of  the 
attack  on  Saxony  aroused  great  indignation  :  it  quite  decided 
the  attitude  of  Elizabeth,  and  with  hers  Woronzov’s  also.  A 
difficulty  was  then  caused  by  the  question  of  territorial 
readjustment.  Russia  coveted  Courland  and  Semigallia ;  but 
the  traditional  policy  of  France  had  been  to  support  Poland 
against  Russia  and  it  might  be  difficult  to  get  Louis  XV  to 
agree.  A  solution  was  found  in  the  compensation  of  Poland 
with  East  Prussia ;  on  November  1  3th,  Maria  Theresa  agreed 
to  considerable  modifications  in  the  Convention  of  April,  and 
on  January  11th,  1757,  Russia  notified  her  adhesion  to  the 
Defensive  Treaty  of  Versailles.  On  February  2nd  an  Austro- 
Russian  Convention  was  drawn  up,  and  on  May  19th  ratifica¬ 
tions  were  exchanged.  But  this  was  far  from  exhausting  the 
list  of  Austria’s  allies.  In  January  1757  the  Diet  of  the 
Empire  declared  its  adhesion  to  the  anti-Prussian  cause,  its 
aid  being  more  valuable  morally  than  materially,  for  it  disproved 
Frederick’s  assertions  that  the  war  was  a  quarrel  between 
religions,  and  it  gave  to  the  Coalition  such  constitutional 
sanction  as  the  obsolescent  forms  could  convey.  Frederick,  at 
any  rate,  could  hardly  plead  that  he  was  the  champion  of  the 
Imperial  constitution.  Hanover  had  done  its  best  to  keep  the 
Empire  neutral,  and  it  had  been  supported  by  Brunswick,  by 
Hesse  -  Cassel,  by  Saxe -Weimar  and  by  Baireuth  ;  but  the 
majority  of  sixty  to  twenty-six  by  which  the  vote  was  carried 
included  many  Protestant  states,  notably  Zweibrucken, 
Hesse  -  Darmstadt,  Baden  -  Durlach  and  even  the  Anspach 

1  Cf.  Buckinghamshire  Papers  (R.H.S.),  and  Waddington,  i.  5°S* 


204  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


Hohenzollern  themselves.  Maria  Theresa  received  a  promise 
of  assistance  from  Wurzburg,  which  offered  6000  men,  while 
Bavaria  (4000),  Cologne  (1800),  the  Palatinate  (6000),  and 
Wurtemberg  (6000)  hired  considerable  forces  to  France.1 
Sweden,  another  Protestant  state,  in  which  the  Senate  now  in 
power  was  much  under  French  influence  and  bitterly  opposed 
to  Prussia,  to  whom  the  monarchical  party  looked  for  support, 
was  induced  to  join  the  Coalition  by  a  promise  of  the  restora¬ 
tion  of  Pomerania  to  the  conditions  of  1679. 

Frederick  was  thus  left  with  only  England  and  Hanover 
and  a  few  of  the  North  German  states  on  his  side,  for 
Denmark  and  Spain  were  resolved  to  keep  out  of  the  conflict, 
and  the  fact  that  the  Orange  faction  favoured  Prussia  made 
the  “  Burgher  party”  in  the  United  Provinces  prefer  neutrality. 
England,  though  taken  by  surprise  by  Frederick’s  sudden 
attack  on  Saxony,  decided  to  support  him  steadily.  To  aid 
in  the  defence  of  Hanover,  the  corps  of  Flessians  and 
Hanoverians,  which  had  been  brought  over  to  defend  England 
when  the  fears  of  an  invasion  were  at  their  height,  were  sent 
back  to  Germany  (Dec.  1756)  to  form  the  nucleus  of  an  army 
to  be  concentrated  on  the  Lippe,  and  Pitt  obtained  a  vote  of 
£ 200,000  from  the  House  of  Commons  for  the  defence  of  the 
Electorate.  This  army,  reinforced  by  10,000  Prussians  and  by 
contingents  from  Brunswick,  Hesse-Cassel  and  Saxe-Weimar, 
was  also  to  defend  the  Prussian  provinces  on  the  Rhine,  and 
hold  in  check  the  French  “  army  of  observation  ”  should  that 
force  exchange  a  passive  for  an  active  policy. 

For  the  campaign  of  1757  both  sides  had  made  great 
preparations.  Frederick  by  impressing  unwilling  recruits  in 
Saxony  had  raised  his  forces  to  nearly  200,000  of  whom 
depots  and  garrisons  absorbed  about  a  quarter.  Of  the  field 
army,  he  had  only  allotted  20,000  to  East  Prussia  and 
10,000  to  the  Rhenish  provinces,  so  that  including  Schwerin’s 
corps  (12,000  horse  and  32,000  foot)  in  Silesia  he  had  over 
120,000  available  for  an  attack  on  Bohemia.  His  original 
intention  would  seem  to  have  been  to  remain  on  the  defensive 
and  await  attack,  as  he  had  done  at  the  beginning  of  1745  ; 
but  this  would  have  played  into  the  hands  of  the  Austrians, 

1  The  attempts  of  Prussian  officers  to  enlist  recruits  in  the  territory  of  Meck- 
lenburg-Schwerin  had  resulted  in  a  violent  quarrel  with  its  Duke,  Frederick  (1756- 
1 7^5)?  and  ranked  the  former  among  the  supporters  of  Austria. 


1757] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


205 


whose  best  policy  obviously  was  to  put  off  a  decisive 
engagement  until  the  advance  of  their  French  and  Russian 
allies  on  either  flank  could  make  itself  felt,  and  at  length 
Frederick,  yielding  to  Winterfeldt’s  representations,  resolved  to 
take  the  offensive.  Four  columns  were  accordingly  directed 
upon  Prague,  the  army  of  Silesia  by  Trautenau,  Gitschin  and 
Brandeis,  Augustus  William  of  Brunswick-Bevern  with  5000 
horse  and  1 8,000  foot  from  Zittau  by  Reichenberg  and 
Mtinchengratz,  the  main  body  under  the  King  moving  straight 
up  the  Elbe  from  Dresden  and  Maurice  of  Anhalt-Dessau 
from  Chemnitz.  The  latter  after  being  checked  in  a  move  on 
Eger  joined  the  main  column  at  Linay  on  April  24th,  bringing 
it  up  to  a  strength  of  15,000  horse  and  45,000  foot.1  This 
converging  movement,  of  course,  enabled  the  Prussians  to 
move  with  much  greater  celerity  than  if  they  had  all  been 
concentrated  upon  one  line  of  advance ;  but  to  plan  the 
junction  of  these  columns  under  the  walls  of  a  fortified  town 
forty  leagues  from  their  base  was,  as  Napoleon  has  pointed 
out,  an  exceedingly  risky  movement.  Luckily  for  Frederick 
the  situation  of  the  Austrians  was  not  such  as  to  enable  them 
to  turn  this  chance  to  good  advantage.  General  Browne  had 
originally  intended  to  take  the  offensive  ;  he  had  collected  large 
magazines  near  the  frontier,  and  his  dispositions,  though  not 
ill-adapted  for  an  advance,  proved  most  unsatisfactory  when 
he  was  superseded  by  Prince  Charles  of  Lorraine  and  that 
incarnation  of  indecision  and  undue  caution  resolved  to  assume 
a  defensive  attitude. 

Thus  when  between  April  1 8th  and  20th  the  Prussian 
columns  set  out  for  Bohemia  their  enemies  were  too  near, 
the  frontier  and  dangerously  separated.  On  the  right  was 
Serbelloni  (27,000)  at  Koniggratz,  Konigsegg  with  23,000 
confronted  Bevern,  at  and  around  Prague  stood  Browne  with 
39,000,  on  the  left,  at  Eger,  d’Aremberg  had  about  20,000. 
Frederick’s  plan  was  to  keep  Browne  occupied  upon  the  line 
of  the  Eger  while  Schwerin  and  Bevern  fell  on  Konigsegg, 
crushed  him,  captured  his  magazines,  and  came  up  on  the  right 
flank  of  Browne  by  Brandeis. 

This  scheme  proved  only  partially  successful.  Konigsegg 
checked  Bevern  at  Reichenberg  April  21st,  and  when  Schwerin 

1  Waddington’s  figures  are  rather  different;  he  gives  Schwerin  as  41,000,  Bevern 
18,000,  Frederick  39,000,  and  Maurice  19,000;  ii.  282. 


206  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


endeavoured  to  intercept  his  retreat,  slipped  away  across  that 
general’s  front  to  Brandeis.  Schwerin  and  Bevern  united  at 
Mlinchengratz  on  the  26th  and  moved  rather  slowly  upon 
Prague,  being  delayed  at  Brandeis  by  the  fact  that  Konigsegg’s 
rearguard  had  burnt  the  bridge  over  the  Elbe.  Meanwhile 
Charles  of  Lorraine,  who  had  taken  over  command  of  the 
Austrians  at  Tuchomierschitz  on  April  30th,  had  withdrawn 
to  Prague  instead  of  adopting  Browne’s  advice  and  giving  battle 
on  the  line  of  the  Eger  at  Budin.  His  action  was  characteris¬ 
tically  over-cautious.  A  man  of  any  dash  or  any  real  strategic 
insight  would  have  seen  that,  with  Schwerin  and  Frederick 
divided  by  the  Elbe  and  several  days  apart,  the  true  policy 
for  the  Austrians  was  to  concentrate  on  one  bank  or  the  other, 
breaking  down  all  bridges  by  which  the  Prussians  could  get 
across,  and  to  fall  either  on  Frederick  or  his  lieutenant  in 
force.  This  would  have  been  fairly  easy,  for  d’Aremberg  had 
joined  Browne  and  Konigsegg  was  much  nearer  his  main 
body  than  was  Schwerin  to  Frederick. 

The  retreat  of  the  Austrians  allowed  Frederick  to  move  up 
to  Prague  unopposed,  his  van  arriving  on  the  White  Mountain 
on  May  2nd.  Schwerin  was  still  some  marches  away, — he 
did  not  cross  the  Elbe  at  Brandeis  till  the  evening  of  May  5th, 
— and  a  more  energetic  commander  than  Prince  Charles  might 
have  seized  the  chance  of  hastening  Konigsegg’s  movements 
and  forcing  an  action  on  Frederick.  But  Charles  was  con¬ 
templating  a  further  retreat  to  join  Serbelloni,  and  was  only 
dissuaded  from  doing  so  by  Browne’s  urgent  representations 
that  such  a  move  would  be  most  disastrous  to  the  prestige  of 
the  Austrians.  Had  Serbelloni  shown  moderate  energy,  had 
he  used  his  cavalry  to  delay  Schwerin,  or  pushed  forward  fast 
enough  to  reach  Prague  before  Schwerin  could  reinforce  his 
master,  the  stand  would  have  been  wise.  As  things  turned 
out,  by  giving  battle  at  Prague  the  Austrians  had  to  fight 
Frederick  and  Schwerin  combined  with  the  nearest  of  Serbelloni’s 
27,000  no  nearer  than  Aruval,  eight  and  a  half  miles  from  the 
nearest  point  of  the  battlefield. 

It  was  on  the  morning  of  May  6th  that  Frederick, 
leaving  Keith  with  30,000  men  on  the  White  Mountain, 
took  38  squadrons  and  20  battalions  across  to  the  right 
of  the  Moldau  and  joined  Schwerin.  He  did  this  un¬ 
molested  by  the  Austrians,  who  were  drawn  up  in  position 


1 757] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


207 


along  the  hills  East  of  Prague,  facing  North,  their  left  on  the 
steep  Ziscaberg,  their  centre  and  right  on  the  rather  more 
accessible  Schanzenberg  and  Taborberg.  In  their  front  the 
marshy  valley  of  the  Roketnitz  served  to  strengthen  the 
position,  the  village  of  Hloupetin  on  the  far  side,  which  served 
as  bridge-head  to  a  road  up  a  ravine  giving  access  to  the 
plateau  near  Hortlozes,  having  been  occupied  by  a  detachment. 
Had  Frederick  carried  out  his  original  intention  of  a  direct 
attack,  the  Prussians  would  have  had  an  extremely  difficult 
task  ;  but  fortunately  for  his  army  he  allowed  Schwerin  to 
prevail  upon  him  to  push  the  Prussian  left  wing  round  to  the 
South,  so  that  they  could  attack  the  easier  Eastern  slopes  of 
the  plateau  by  Sterbohol.  This  move  outflanked  the  Austrian 
right  and  forced  that  division  to  alter  its  position  hastily,  its 
right  moving  from  near  Hostawitz  to  Sterbohol,  its  left 
coming  up  to  the  East  of  Maleschitz.  Thus  the  Austrian  line 
presented  a  salient  angle  somewhat  insufficiently  protected  in 
the  direction  of  Hostawitz.  About  10  a.m.  Schwerin  having 
reached  Potschernitz  deployed  his  men  into  line,  the  cavalry 
on  the  left,  the  infantry  in  two  columns  under  Winter- 
feldt  and  Bevern,  and  began  climbing  the  slopes.  He  met 
with  a  stout  resistance,  and  the  swamps  at  the  foot  of  the 
slopes  proved  difficult  to  cross.  On  the  left  his  cavalry  after 
being  twice  repulsed  were  reinforced  by  Ziethen  and  obtained 
the  mastery  over  Lucchesi,  whose  horsemen  they  routed  and 
chased  from  the  field,  thus  neglecting  their  duty  of  succouring 
the  hard-pressed  Prussian  infantry.  Winterfeldt’s  men,  checked 
by  the  artillery  fire,  were  routed  by  a  charge  of  some  grenadiers 
whom  Browne  brought  up,  and  Schwerin  himself  perished  in 
the  attempt  to  rally  them.  The  Austrians  pursuing  too  far 
got  somewhat  out  of  hand,  for  Browne  had  been  badly  wounded, 
and  they  had  to  retire  when  Schwerin’s  reserve  gave  Winter- 
feldt  a  point  on  which  to  rally.  In  falling  back  the  Austrians 
were  taken  in  flank  by  Bevern,  whose  men,  separated  by  a 
spur  of  the  hill  from  Winterfeldt’s,  had  not  shared  in  their 
comrades’  disaster.  Just  at  this  moment  the  Prussian  right, 
having  carried  Hloupetin,  began  to  push  up  the  ravine  towards 
Hortlozes.  This  move  was  due  to  Mannstein,  and  was  well 
seconded  by  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick,  who  planted  a  large 
battery  on  the  hills  by  Hloupetin.  Simultaneously  Prince 
Henry  of  Prussia’s  division  of  the  centre  pushed  across  the 


208  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


Roketnitz  brook  from  Kyge  and  assailed  the  Taborberg,  thus 
thrusting  itself  into  the  gap  at  the  salient  angle  of  the  Austrian 
position,  which  had  been  left  open  by  the  advance  of  the  left 
division  of  the  right  from  Maleschitz  to  repulse  Bevern. 
Prince  Henry’s  appearance  near  Maleschitz  decided  the  struggle 
on  the  right ;  Bevern,  who  had  been  checked,  was  able  to  carry 
Maleschitz,  and  the  whole  right  and  centre  of  the  Austrian 
army  was  now  in  complete  disorder.  Their  left,  hitherto 
hardly  engaged  at  all,  now  fell  back  in  good  order  to  Prague, 
its  retirement  being  covered  by  some  regiments  of  cuirassiers, 
who  charged  home  with  great  effect  against  the  Prussian 
infantry  and  prevented  Frederick’s  cavalry  from  molesting 
their  retreat. 

The  battle  thus  ended  about  3  p.m.  with  the  retreat  of  the 
Austrian  army  within  the  walls  of  Prague.  Some  15,000 
men,  mainly  the  routed  cavalry  of  Lucchesi’s  division,  got 
away  to  the  Southward,  but  33  guns  were  left  on  the  field 
and  the  killed,  wounded,  and  prisoners  amounted  at  least 
to  15,000.  Frederick  on  his  side  lost  5  guns,  captured  from 
Winterfeldt  by  Browne’s  grenadiers,  and  the  official  return 
gave  his  losses  as  nearly  1 3,000.  The  move  round  the 
right  of  the  Austrian  position  was  the  decisive  stroke,  as  it 
forced  the  Austrians  to  alter  their  front  in  a  great  hurry,  and 
to  give  battle  in  a  position  whose  defects  were  shown  when 
the  counter-attack  of  their  right  exposed  the  salient  angle  of 
their  line.  At  the  same  time  the  sudden  illness  of  Prince 
Charles,  who  had  been  seized  with  a  fit  when  trying  to  rally 
Lucchesi’s  cavalry,  and  the  fall  of  Browne  had  contributed  not 
a  little  to  give  the  Prussians  the  victory  by  leaving  the 
Austrians  without  a  commander. 

But  though  he  had  within  a  fortnight  overrun  Northern 
Bohemia,  driven  his  enemies  in  on  Prague,  captured  the  valuable 
magazines  they  had  collected,  beaten  them  in  a  pitched  battle, 
and  cooped  up  nearly  50,000  of  them  within  the  walls  of  the 
Bohemian  capital,  Frederick  had  a  heavy  task  still  before  him. 
Prague  was  now  strongly  fortified  and  well  garrisoned,  and 
was  not  likely  to  prove  the  easy  prey  it  had  been  in  1741  and 
1745.  Unless  the  garrison  showed  unexpected  fainthearted¬ 
ness  or  the  Austrian  government  displayed  a  lack  of  energy 
in  collecting  a  relieving  force,  Frederick  might  find  himself  in 
an  awkward  position.  Nevertheless  he  set  himself  down  to 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


209 


1 7  5  7] 

the  siege  of  the  Bohemian  capital,  pushing  out  Bevern  with 
2000  cavalry  and  5000  infantry  in  the  direction  of  Kolin, 
whither  Daun  and  the  corps  formerly  under  Serbelloni  had 
withdrawn  on  hearing  of  the  battle  of  May  6th. 

Daun  retired  as  Bevern  approached,  falling  back  towards 
Czaslau.  He  was  in  no  hurry  for  a  battle,  as  the  fugitives 
from  Prague,  many  of  whom  had  joined  him,  were  in  no  con¬ 
dition  for  immediate  action,  and  considerable  reinforcements 
were  coming  up  from  Moravia  and  elsewhere.  Moreover,  it 
would  be  to  his  advantage  to  draw  Bevern  away  from  the 
Prussian  main  body. 

The  Prussians  conducted  the  attack  on  Prague  with  no 
little  vigour,  and  by  May  28th  the  batteries  were  ready  for  the 
bombardment.  Much  damage  was  done  to  the  town,  but  the 
injury  inflicted  on  its  defences  was  but  slight,  and  a  violent 
storm  quenched  the  fires  caused  by  the  Prussian  shells  and, 
causing  the  Moldau  to  rise  rapidly,  carried  away  Frederick’s 
bridges  of  boats.  For  forty-eight  hours  Keith’s  division  on 
the  left  bank  was  in  great  peril,  but  the  Austrian  commanders, 
though  they  could  have  thrown  40,000  men  upon  his  15,000, 
their  bridge  being  intact,  let  this  fine  opportunity  escape. 
Luckily  for  Maria  Theresa  the  general  in  command  of  the 
relieving  army  was  a  man  of  more  capacity  and  enterprise  than 
Charles  of  Lorraine,  for  had  the  fate  of  Prague  depended  on 
that  Prince  its  fall  would  have  been  only  a  question  of  time. 
By  the  first  week  in  June,  Daun  had  collected  a  force  of  over 
50,000  men,  a  third  being  cavalry,  and  on  June  12th  he 
moved  forward  on  Kuttenberg.  Bevern  had  received  various 
reinforcements  from  time  to  time,  but  he  was  much  weaker 
than  Daun  and  was  driven  in  on  Kolin  (June  13th)  after  some 
sharp  fighting.  The  danger  to  his  lieutenant  forced  Frederick 
to  come  up  himself  and  join  Bevern  at  Kaurzim  (June  13th) 
with  fresh  reinforcements,  which  brought  the  covering  army 
up  to  34,000,  16,000  being  cavalry.  Frederick  entertained 
but  a  poor  opinion  of  Daun  and  his  army,  which  he  regarded 
as  a  rabble  of  raw  recruits,  not  exactly  “  stiffened  ”  by  the 
runaways  of  May  6th,  and  he  expected  an  easy  victory,  which 
would  enable  him  to  press  the  siege  to  a  successful  issue. 
He  therefore  resolved  to  attack  at  once  despite  his  inferiority 
in  numbers  and  the  strength  of  the  Austrian  position 
(June  1 8  th). 

14 


2io  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


Daun  had  posted  his  army  along  the  Kamhayek  hills 
which  slope  up  gradually  to  the  South  of  the  road  from 
Planian  to  Kolin.  His  left  at  Radenin  and  Podborz  was 
covered  by  a  brook  which  served  as  the  connection  between 
a  chain  of  large  pools,  and  this  with  a  swamp  in  rear  secured 
him  against  a  flanking  movement.  His  right  rested  on  the 
village  of  Kreczor  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  heights,  a  corps 
of  cavalry  under  Nadasky  being  thrown  forward  on  the  lower 
ground  in  front  of  Kreczor  across  the  road  to  Kolin.  The 
first  reconnaissance  showed  Frederick  that  a  frontal  attack  on 
the  left  or  left  centre  would  be  most  unwise  but  that  a 
better  chance  offered  on  the  right.  Accordingly,  repeating 
the  manoeuvre  which  had  been  so  successful  at  Prague,  he 
moved  across  the  Austrian  front  to  assail  their  right  flank. 
This  time,  however,  the  manoeuvre  did  not  cause  the  Austrians 
to  shift  their  position,  and  in  moving  across  the  enemy’s  front 
the  Prussians  were  galled  by  the  Austrian  guns  on  the  heights 
and  the  Croat  sharpshooters  lying  in  the  cornfields  at  their 
foot. 

Ziethen  and  the  cavalry  of  the  Prussian  vanguard  began 
well  by  driving  Nadasky  off  to  the  South-East  while  the 
infantry,  seven  battalions  under  Htilsen,  wheeling  to  the  right 
when  past  Kudlirz,  assaulted  and  carried  Kreczor.  Here,  how¬ 
ever,  they  were  checked  by  a  battery  of  twelve  guns  Daun  had 
posted  on  the  left  of  the  village  and  by  Wied’s  infantry  and 
some  Croats  in  an  oak-grove  to  the  South-West  of  it.  This 
last  obstacle  also  checked  Ziethen’s  pursuit  of  Nadasky,  and 
Hiilsen,  though  reinforced  by  three  battalions,  could  get  no 
farther.  According  to  the  original  plan  he  should  have  been 
supported  by  the  infantry  of  the  left  under  Maurice  of  Dessau, 
who  were  to  have  followed  in  his  tracks,  but  this  division  found 
itself  instead  committed  to  a  frontal  attack  on  Brzisti  just  West 
of  Kreczor.  Frederick,  anxious  to  get  it  forward,  ordered  it  to 
face  to  the  right  long  before  it  reached  the  proper  turning-place, 
and  losing  his  temper  when  Maurice  expostulated,  gave  the 
order  “  forward  ”  without  adding  the  words  “  half  left,”  which 
would  have  sent  it  to  Hiilsen’s  aid.  Hiilsen,  indeed,  used  the 
diversion  to  push  on  and  carry  the  battery  behind  Kreczor,  but 
Daun  brought  up  two  infantry  divisions  from  the  second  line 
to  hold  him  and  Maurice  in  check,  four  battalions  of  grenadiers 
recovered  the  oak-grove  from  Hiilsen  and  pouring  a  flanking 


1757] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


21 1 


fire  into  Ziethen’s  ranks  forced  him  to  retire  before  the  rallied 
squadrons  of  Nadasky.  Meanwhile  on  the  Prussian  centre 
things  had  gone  altogether  wrong.  Mannstein,  whose  division 
was  following  Maurice’s  along  the  road,  was  so  much  worried 
by  the  Croat  skirmishers  that  he  wheeled  a  battalion  to  the 
right  to  disperse  them.  The  Croats  stood  their  ground  and 
were  reinforced,  Mannstein  also  reinforced  his  men,  and  before 
long  his  whole  division  was  committed  to  a  frontal  attack  on 
Chotzemitz  which  made  little  progress.  The  arrival  of  the 
reinforcement  from  the  second  line  quickly  restored  the  balance 
on  the  Austrian  right.  Pennavaire’s  cavalry  division  attempt¬ 
ing  to  assist  Hiilsen  was  foiled  by  a  fine  charge  by  two  Saxon 
cavalry  regiments,  more  Austrian  cavalry  were  thrown  into  the 
fight,  and  at  last  the  divisions  of  Hiilsen  and  Maurice  gave  back 
in  disorder,  their  example  being  followed  by  Mannstein,  whose 
men  lost  heavily  under  artillery  fire.  On  the  Austrian  left 
Puebla’s  infantry  came  down  from  the  heights  above  Breczsan 
and,  vigorously  supported  by  Stampa’s  cavalry,  assailed  the 
eight  battalions  under  Bevern  which  formed  the  one  intact 
division  of  the  Prussian  army.  Luckily  for  Frederick  these 
battalions  made  a  gallant  resistance,  and  at  the  cost  of  nearly 
3000  men  kept  the  road  towards  Planian  clear  for  the  fugitives 
of  the  left  and  centre  to  stream  past  behind  them. 

Daun  had  won  a  great  victory  to  which  he  had  con¬ 
tributed  largely  himself.  His  excellent  choice  of  the  position, 
his  judicious  handling  of  his  well-served  artillery,  and  his 
promptitude  and  decision  in  reinforcing  the  threatened  points, 
had  as  much  to  do  with  the  victory  as  the  error  in  the 
directions  given  to  Maurice,  or  the  blunder  of  marching  the 
Prussian  army  across  the  Austrian  front  within  range  of 
their  guns,  which  had  led  to  Mannstein’s  becoming  prematurely 
engaged.  Ziethen  also  must  be  held  partly  responsible,  since 
he  failed  to  support  Hiilsen  properly ;  but  when  all  is  said 
and  done  the  chief  cause  of  the  defeat  was  that  Frederick 
did  not,  after  the  victory  outside  Prague,  at  once  push  out 
against  Daun  and  destroy  his  detachment.  On  the  morrow 
of  May  6th  he  would  have  had  little  to  fear  from  the 
demoralised  army  of  Charles  of  Lorraine:  25,000  men 
could  have  held  them  in  check  with  ease.  But  Frederick, 
underestimating  Daun  and  the  defensive  capacities  of  Prague, 
had  tried  to  reduce  in  six  weeks  a  fortress  capable  of  holding 


212  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


out  much  longer,  and  the  defeat  of  Kolin  was  the  result  of 
his  error  of  judgment. 

Leaving  Bevern  and  Maurice  to  withdraw  the  relics  of  the 
covering  army  over  the  Elbe  at  Nimburg,  Frederick  hastened 
back  to  Prague1  to  raise  the  siege.  On  the  20th  of  June  the 
retreat  began,  the  Austrians  sallying  out  in  time  to  fall  on 
Keith,  who  was  covering  the  movement,  and  inflict  on  him 
severe  losses,  including  five  guns  and  most  of  his  baggage. 
More  might  perhaps  have  been  done,  but  Charles  of  Lorraine 
was  not  the  man  to  make  the  most  of  his  chances.  It  was  a 
great  misfortune  for  Austria  that  Charles  should  have  so  far 
recovered  his  health  as  to  be  able  to  take  command  of  the 
united  armies  which  joined  forces  at  Podschernitz  on  June  26th. 
A  really  vigorous  pursuit  ought  to  have  clinched  the  success  of 
Kolin  by  cutting  off  one  of  the  two  retreating  columns,  either 
the  besiegers  who  moved  by  Budin  to  Leitmeritz,  or  the  Kolin 
force,  now  under  Prince  Augustus  William  of  Prussia,  which 
had  reached  Bohm  Leipa  on  July  7th.  It  was  against  this 
force  that  Daun  and  Lorraine  turned,  crossing  the  Elbe  at 
Brandeis  (July  1st)  and  moving  by  Miinchengratz  (July  7th) 
and  Liebenau  to  threaten  Augustus  William’s  communica¬ 
tions  with  Zittau  and  Gabel.  On  July  15th  they  took 
Gabel,  which  forced  Augustus  to  retire  to  Zittau  by  the 
roundabout  route  through  Raumburg.  The  Austrians  had 
only  twenty-five  miles  to  cover  against  forty,  and  might  have 
anticipated  the  Prussians  at  Zittau  and  cut  them  off  com¬ 
pletely.  However,  their  ineradicable  slowness  once  again  let 
the  Prussians  be  first  at  the  critical  spot,  and  Augustus 
William,  whose  men  had  suffered  great  privations  and  had 
deserted  freely,  finally  reached  a  haven  of  refuge  at  Bautzen 
on  July  27th.  His  failure  to  maintain  his  position  had 
involved  the  retreat  of  Keith’s  corps  from  Leitmeritz  to 
Bohemia,  after  which  Frederick,  leaving  Maurice  of  Dessau 
on  the  Elbe,  brought  all  available  troops  across  to  Bautzen 
to  join  the  Kolin  army  and  try  to  retrieve  all  by  forcing 
a  battle  on  Lorraine.  But  Lorraine  stood  firm  in  a  strong 
position  near  Zittau,  and  Frederick  had  to  retire  in  dis¬ 
appointment  to  Ostritz  (Aug.  1 9th).  Thus  the  invasion 

1  The  Prussian  loss  was  about  13,500,  of  which  12,000  were  among  the  infantry, 
who  were  thus  reduced  to  a  third  of  their  original  strength  ;  they  left  45  guns  and 
5000  prisoners  in  Daun’s  hands.  The  Austrian  losses  slightly  exceeded  8000. 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS1  WAR,  I 


213 


1 757  J 

of  Bohemia,  from  which  so  much  had  been  hoped  and 
which  had  begun  so  well,  ended  in  failure,  and  Frederick 
found  himself  at  the  end  of  August  in  the  same  position  as 
he  had  occupied  in  April,  only  with  his  most  trusted  lieutenant 
dead  and  his  army  nearly  ruined. 

Nor  was  it  very  cheerful  intelligence  which  reached  him 
from  the  forces  covering  his  flanks  against  the  allies 
of  Maria  Theresa.  Had  not  the  Russian  commanders, 
Apraxin  and  Fermor,  been  deterred  by  political  considera¬ 
tions  in  addition  to  natural  slowness  and  incapacity  they 
could  have  done  far  more  against  the  weak  force  opposed 
to  them.  As  it  was,  their  headquarters  did  not  reach  Kovno 
till  June,  and  not  till  July  5th  did  the  fall  of  Memel  allow 
Fermor  to  rejoin  the  covering  force  under  Apraxin.  Even 
after  this  their  movements  were  so  slow  and  apparently 
meaningless  that  despite  the  great  disparity  of  numbers  the 
Prussian  commander  Lehwaldt  ventured  to  attack  them  at 
Gross  Jaegerndorf  (Aug.  30th).  A  sharp  fight  resulted  in 
a  victory  for  the  big  battalions,  Lehwaldt  losing  4500  men 
and  28  guns;  but  if  tactically  a  defeat,  strategically  it  was 
a  Prussian  victory,  for  Apraxin  made  no  effort  to  follow 
it  up,  but  fell  back  to  Tilsit  and  from  there  to  Memel, 
pleading  that  he  was  too  short  of  supplies  to  do  anything 
further  (Sept).  His  retreat  allowed  Lehwaldt  to  move 
across  into  Pomerania,  which  the  Swedes  were  overrunning, 
to  drive  them  out  of  it,  take  Anclam  and  Demmin,  and  coop 
them  up  in  Stralsund  and  Riigen.  The  true  causes  for 
Apraxin’s  strange  conduct  were  not  military  but  political : 
the  Czarina  was  supposed  to  be  at  the  point  of  death,  and 
the  admiration  of  the  heir,  Grand  Duke  Peter,  for  the  Prussian 
King  was  notorious.  Apraxin  had  no  wish  to  make  himself 
impossible  by  overthrowing  his  future  master’s  hero. 

Very  different  was  the  course  of  events  in  Western 
Germany.  The  Prussian  corps  on  the  Rhine  had  found  it 
hopeless  to  attempt  to  hold  Cleves  and  Mark  against  the 
vast  army  gathering  to  attack  them.  The  PTench  mustered 
127  squadrons  (at  160)  and  107  battalions  (at  720),  a  force 
imposing  on  paper,  but  overburdened  with  a  vast  staff  of 
general  officers,  far  larger  than  could  be  of  any  use,  and 
accompanied  by  an  enormous  baggage-train.  The  troops 
were  not  in  the  best  condition,  the  discipline  and  tone  of 


214  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 

the  French  army  was  bad,  the  administration  defective  and 
corruption  rampant  in  the  supply  service.  On  April  8th 
d’Estrees  occupied  Wesel,  but  not  till  May  21st  were  the 
contractors,  of  whom  Paris-Duverney  was  the  chief,  able  to 
provide  enough  transport  and  supplies  to  permit  a  further 
advance.  Against  so  large  a  force  Cumberland,  who  at 
Frederick’s  request  had  taken  command  of  the  army  which 
George  II  had  collected  for  the  defence  of  Hanover,1  could  do 
nothing  but  retire.  He  concentrated  at  Bielefeldt  by  June  1  2th 
and  retired  behind  the  Weser,  the  French  moving  slowly 
forward  by  Munster  (June  1st)  and  Rheda  (June  14th)  to 
Bielefeldt  (June  18th).  Here  they  halted  till  July  8th,  after 
which  Contades  with  20,000  men  was  detached  against  Cassel, 
which  was  duly  occupied,  the  main  body  preparing  to  cross 
the  Weser  at  Hoxter.  This  move  at  once  threatened  Cumber¬ 
land’s  left,  and  covered  the  operations  of  a  new  corps  it  was 
proposed  to  put  into  the  field  between  the  Lahn  and  Main. 
The  stroke  roused  Cumberland.  To  protect  Hanover  he 
broke  up  from  Afferda  and  moved  upstream  to  Hastenbeck, 
coming  into  contact  with  the  French  on  July  24th.  It 
was  on  July  26th  that  the  French  moved  forward  against 
Cumberland’s  position  at  Hastenbeck.  It  was  fairly  strong, 
a  hill  on  the  right,  the  Sintelberg,  gave  a  good  post  for 
the  29  battalions  and  30  squadrons  of  that  wing.  The 
centre,  22  battalions,  was  in  rear  of  Hastenbeck,  forming 
a  connecting  link  with  the  8  battalions  of  the  left  on  the 
Scheckenberg.  The  only  weak  spot  seemed  to  be  a  ravine 
in  the  left  centre  between  Hastenbeck  and  the  mountain, 
but  this  had  been  secured  by  the  erection  of  three  large 
batteries.  However,  it  was  against  the  left  that  d’Estrees 
directed  his  main  attack,  delivered  by  the  gallant  Chevert 
and  12  battalions.  Despite  a  fog  and  the  difficulties  of  the 
ground,  Chevert  accomplished  his  task,  while  d’Armentieres 
in  the  right  centre  carried  one  of  the  three  batteries  but 
failed  to  keep  Chevert  and  the  centre  in  touch,  so  that  Anlazy’s 
division 2  had  to  be  put  in  before  another  battery  could 
be  won  or  Hastenbeck  carried  by  Contades.  About  11.30 
both  these  tasks  had  been  accomplished.  Cumberland’s 
centre  was  pierced,  his  left  seemed  going  to  be  cut  off  by 

1  Waddington,  ii.  195. 

2  Partly  composed  of  Austrians  from  the  Netherlands. 


1 7  5  7] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


215 


Chevert,  who  was  advancing  to  roll  up  the  Hanoverian  line, 
when  the  troops  to  his  left  were  suddenly  attacked  and  dis¬ 
ordered  by  Breitenbach  and  the  Hanoverian  Guards.  Two 
regiments  under  de  Lorges  gave  way  completely  and  the 
disorder  spread  to  Anlazy’s  Austrians  and  Swiss.  But  the 
effort  was  too  late ;  Cumberland  had  already  given  orders  to 
retire,  and  Breitenbach’s  bold  stroke  only  served  to  secure 
an  unmolested  retreat.  Out  of  a  force  of  40,000,  Cumberland 
had  lost  about  1500  of  all  ranks  with  12  guns;  but  he 
had  the  satisfaction  of  inflicting  on  the  enemy,  who  were 
superior  by  half  his  force,  a  loss  of  1000  killed  and  1300 
wounded.  He  was  a  little  precipitate  in  ordering  the  retreat, 
but  Chevert’s  success  had  completely  compromised  his  position. 
He  made  no  attempt  to  stand  before  reaching  Nienbourg 
on  the  YVeser,  where  he  rallied  his  men,  moving  thence  to 
Verden  (Aug.  8th),  which  he  evacuated  on  August  23  rd 
for  Stade. 

Meanwhile  d’Estrees  had  been  superseded  by  the  Due 
de  Richelieu  on  August  3rd.  This  was  the  outcome  of 
intrigues  at  Paris  and  had  the  effect  of  temporarily  paralysing 
the  activity  of  the  French.  However,  the  effects  of  the 
victory  were  considerable  enough  as  it  was.  Hanover, 
Minden  and  Hameln  capitulated  without  delay,  the  Duke 
of  Brunswick  came  to  terms  with  the  victors  and  placed  his 
duchy  at  their  disposal  (Aug.  10th).  On  August  20th, 
Richelieu,  whose  force  had  been  considerably  reinforced  and 
included  4  Austrian  battalions  and  10  from  the  Palatinate, 
resumed  his  advance  from  Nienbourg  on  Stade.  On 
August  2 1st  he  received  from  Cumberland  a  proposal  for 
a  suspension  of  hostilities,  on  the  ground  that  there  was  no 
war  between  Hanover  and  France;  but  this  he  declined, 
although  it  seems  to  have  suggested  to  him  the  notion  of 
utilising  the  intervention  of  Denmark  to  make  some  arrange¬ 
ment  of  the  sort.  Before  his  appointment  in  place  of 
d’Estrees  it  had  been  proposed  to  give  him  command  of  a 
new  corps  to  operate  between  the  Lahn  and  Main,  and  he 
was  very  anxious  to  be  able  to  devote  himself  to  his  proper 
objective,  Magdeburg.  The  retreat  of  Cumberland  had  drawn 
the  French  away  from  that  point,  and  Richelieu  found  the 
prospect  of  sitting  down  before  Stade  most  distasteful.  The 
siege  was  likely  to  be  difficult  and  unhealthy,  the  country 


21 6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


was  poor  and  ill-provided  with  roads,  and  if  the  defence 

was  stubborn  an  English  force  which  was  believed  to  be 

at  sea  might  arrive  and  raise  the  siege.  Accordingly 

Richelieu  availed  himself  of  Danish  mediation  to  conclude  the 
famous  Convention  of  Kloster  Zeven  (Sept.  8th).  By  this 
Cumberland  agreed  to  send  his  auxiliaries  to  their  homes, 
to  canton  the  Hanoverians,  who  were  not  to  be  regarded 

as  prisoners  of  war,  on  the  farther  bank  of  the  Elbe,  except 
for  4000  men  who  were  to  hold  Stade  under  a  Danish 
guarantee  of  its  neutrality ;  while  the  French  were  to  occupy 
Bremen  and  Verden.  The  motives  which  led  the  Duke  of 
Cumberland  to  conclude  this  unfortunate  arrangement  and 
the  tale  of  its  reception  by  King  George  II  belong  properly 
to  the  biography  of  the  ill-fated  commander.  If  his  tactics 
at  Hastenbeck  had  not  been  of  the  most  skilful,  he  cannot 
be  held  solely  responsible  for  the  Convention :  it  is  quite 
clear  that  in  concluding  a  convention  of  neutrality  he  was 
not  exceeding  his  powers.  He  had  orders  to  save  the  army 
at  any  price:  on  August  11th  full  powers  to  conclude  a 
peace  for  Hanover  had  been  sent  to  him,  and  it  was  not 
till  September  16th,  a  week  after  the  Convention  had  been 
signed,  that  new  orders  were  sent,  directing  him  to  retire  on 
Magdeburg.1  This  alteration  was  caused  by  George  II  dis¬ 
covering  that  his  scheme  for  a  separate  peace  for  Hanover 
would  not  be  acceptable  at  Vienna.  The  episode  is  really  the 
last  phase  of  that  conflict  between  British  and  Hanoverian 
interests  in  which  the  Electorate  was  at  last  sacrificed  to  its 
partner. 

As  things  turned  out  it  was  not  only  George  II  who  was 
annoyed  with  the  Convention.  In  France  it  was  thought  by 
no  means  satisfactory,  as  it  did  not  secure  the  disbandment 
or  disarmament  of  the  Hanoverians ;  but  the  French  were 
prepared  to  accept  it.  George  II  was  unreasonably  furious 
with  Cumberland,  and  only  refrained  from  denouncing  the 
Convention  because  he  assumed  that  the  troops  had  been 
dispersed  according  to  its  terms  and  would  be  at  the  mercy 
of  the  French.  On  learning,  therefore,  that  this  had  not 
been  the  case,  and  that  a  hitch  over  the  details  connected 
with  the  Hessians  had  caused  delay  in  its  execution,  he 
decided  to  refuse  to  ratify  it  (Oct.  5  th).  The  British 

1  Cf.  Waddington,  ii.  ch.  ix„ 


1 75  7] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


217 


ministry  had  all  along  refused  to  be  bound  by  it,  and  had 
declared  that  they  would  continue  to  support  Frederick  : 
they  now  (Oct.  7th)  decided  to  take  the  Hanoverian  army 
also  into  British  pay. 

George  was  able  to  tear  up  the  Convention  in  this  way 
because,  directly  it  had  been  concluded,  Richelieu  had  moved 
off  from  the  mouth  of  the  Elbe  to  Brunswick  (Sept.  20th), 
and  thence  to  Halberstadt  (29th),  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick’s 
Prussian  division  retiring  before  him.  Beyond  Halberstadt, 
on  which  he  had  fixed  as  his  winter-quarters,  he  refused  to  go, 
declaring,  not  without  truth,  that  it  would  ruin  the  army, 
which,  indeed,  was  in  a  bad  condition,  for  Richelieu  had  been 
scandalously  lax  as  to  discipline.  Austria  urged  that  he 
should  make  one  more  effort,  that  something  should  be  done 
in  co-operation  with  Soubise  and  the  Imperial  army  which 
had  come  up  to  the  Saale.  Had  Richelieu  been  enough  of  an 
officer  to  keep  his  men  in  hand,  and  enough  of  a  strategist  to 
grasp  the  supreme  importance  of  maintaining  the  advantage 
Soubise’s  advance  had  won,  he  would  not  have  contented 
himself  with  the  despatch  of  de  Broglie  with  1  7  squadrons  and 
20  battalions  to  reinforce  Soubise  but  would  have  brought 
up  every  available  man.  Richelieu’s  inactivity  at  Halberstadt 
was  largely  responsible  for  the  disastrous  end  of  the  campaign 
on  the  Saale. 

The  Franco- Imperial  force  on  that  river  represented  the 
junction  of  the  original  “  auxiliary  corps,”  1  with  the  motley 
and  half  -  organised  army  of  the  Empire  which  had  been 
collected  at  Nuremberg  by  the  Prince  of  Saxe  -  Hildburg- 
hausen.  This  force,  a  strange  mosaic  of  detachments  of  half- 
trained  and  undisciplined  militiamen,  drawn  from  all  the 
petty  states  of  South-Western  Germany,  was  without  proper 
transport,  commissariat  and  other  administrative  services.  To 
take  such  a  rabble  into  the  field  would  be  to  court  disaster, 
and  it  is  not  surprising  if  Soubise  displayed  considerable 
anxiety  to  avoid  that  contact  with  the  Prussians  for  which 
Saxe-Hildburghausen  was  so  zealous.  His  own  corps  should 
have  included  the  10,000  Bavarians  and  Wiirtembergers  in 
French  pay,  but  they  had  already  been  pushed  forward  to  join 
the  main  Austrian  army,  and  had  been  replaced  by  8000  men 
drawn  from  Richelieu’s  army.  With  some  22,000  men  (32 

1  Cf.  p.  200. 


21 8  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


squadrons  and  31  battalions)  Soubise  set  out  from  Strassburg 
at  the  beginning  of  August,  and  on  the  25th  joined  at  Erfurt  the 
army  of  the  Empire,  which  had  left  Nuremberg  a  fortnight  earlier. 

To  settle  the  direction  of  their  next  move  Soubise  and  his 
colleague  found  difficult,  but  the  question  was  settled  for  them 
by  Frederick,  who,  though  everybody  was  expecting  him  to  keep 
his  force  concentrated,  suddenly  broke  up  (Aug.  25  th)  from 
his  position  in  Lusatia.  Taking  12,000  men  with  him,  and 
picking  up  Maurice  of  Dessau  at  Dresden  on  the  way,  he 
pushed  across  Saxony  to  Erfurt,  which  he  reached  on  Sep¬ 
tember  13th  after  a  march  of  170  miles.  Before  his  approach 
Soubise  recoiled  into  the  hilly  country  round  Eisenach,  where 
he  halted  (Sept.  15th).  Frederick  made  no  attempt  to  force 
him  to  fight,  but  remained  inactive  at  Erfurt  until  October  1  ith. 
This  inactivity  might  have  cost  him  dear  against  somewhat 
more  enterprising  opponents,  but  he  was  probably  right  not 
to  push  on  against  Soubise,  who  might  have  drawn  him  farther 
away  from  his  other  divisions  by  a  continued  retreat. 

Frederick’s  move  to  the  Saale  had  decided  the  problem 
of  their  next  step,  which  had  been  troubling  the  Austrian 
generals.  Not  unnaturally,  Maria  Theresa  was  dissatisfied 
with  the  inaction  into  which  the  main  army  had  relapsed 
after  its  success  in  Bohemia,  and  it  had  been  decided  to 
send  a  corps  into  Silesia  to  attempt  the  recovery  of  that 
province ;  but  nothing  had  been  settled  as  to  its  strength  or 
objective,  as  no  one  could  tell  what  Frederick  would  be  likely 
to  do.  His  move  gave  them  two  alternatives,  either  to  follow 
him  and  try  to  catch  him  between  themselves  and  the  Franco- 
Imperial  army,  a  policy  which  would  in  many  ways  have  been 
the  wisest,  or  to  fall  on  Bevern  and  the  corps  left  opposite 
them  in  Lusatia.  It  was  on  this  second  course  that  they 
decided,  and  accordingly  Daun  and  Lorraine  moved  down  the 
Neisse,  but  found  Bevern  in  so  strong  a  position  at  Ostritz 
that  they  hesitated  to  attack.  One  Prussian  corps,  however, 
offered  more  favourable  chances  to  an  assailant.  This  was 
Winterfeldt’s  division  of  10,000  men,  which  stood  at  Moys 
on  the  right  bank  of  the  Lusatian  Neisse,  covering  Bevern’s 
left  and  protecting  his  communications  with  Silesia.  Against 
this  corps  Lorraine  detached  Nadasky  and  d’Aremberg,  and 
they  falling  upon  Winterfeldt  defeated  him  completely.  He 
himself  was  killed,  and  his  corps  had  2000  casualties  and  lost 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


219 


1  757] 

5  guns  (Sept.  7th).  This  reverse  dislodged  Bevern  from 
Ostritz  (Sept.  9th).  He  retired  North-East  to  Bunzlau  (Sept. 
15th),  and  thence  to  Liegnitz  (18th),  covering  Silesia,  but 
sacrificing  his  communications  with  Frederick.  He  might 
easily  have  been  cut  off  from  Silesia  had  Lorraine  handled 
his  cavalry  with  any  skill,  or  even  succeeded  in  triumphing 
over  the  difficulties  of  road  and  rain  to  the  same  extent  as 
Bevern  did  ;  but  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  state  that  the  cautious 
and  unenterprising  Lorraine  failed  completely  to  anticipate 
Bevern,  and  when  a  bombardment  forced  the  Prussians  from 
their  position  at  Liegnitz  they  were  allowed  to  get  away  to 
Breslau  in  comparative  safety  by  a  fine  forced  march,  despite 
the  great  numerical  superiority  of  the  Austrian  cavalry. 
Bevern  was  actually  able  to  cross  to  the  right  of  the  Oder, 
and  gain  Breslau  along  that  bank  (Oct.  1st)  quite  unmolested. 

Slowly  the  Austrians  followed  to  Breslau,  where  they 
found  Bevern,  with  the  Lohe  Brook  and  several  fortified 
villages  in  his  front,  sheltering  almost  under  the  guns  of  the 
fortress.  An  attack  was  proposed ;  but  Daun  objected  that, 
even  if  successful,  it  would  merely  drive  the  Prussians  back 
into  Breslau,  which  could  not  be  taken  without  long-range  siege 
guns.  It  was  therefore  decided  that  the  main  body  should 

take  post  near  Breslau  to  cover  the  siege  of  Schweidnitz  by 

Nadasky  and  20,000  men  from  any  possible  interruption  by 
Bevern.  It  was  a  weak  policy,  for  it  kept  the  main  Austrian 
army  uselessly  inactive  until  the  fall  of  Schweidnitz  (Nov. 
1  2th)  set  Nadasky  free  for  further  operations;  but  it  was  not 
so  serious  an  error  as  the  failure  to  intercept  and  defeat  Bevern. 
On  November  19th  Nadasky  rejoined  Lorraine,  upon  which  it 
was  decided  to  try  the  attack  on  Bevern  which  had  till  then 
been  deemed  inadvisable.  If  they  delayed  much  longer, 

Frederick,  who  had  won  a  great  victory  at  Rossbach  a  fort¬ 
night  before,  would  be  back  to  help  Bevern.  This  was  indeed 
what  he  was  attempting,  hoping  to  be  in  time  to  save 

Schweidnitz,  and  to  catch  the  Austrians  in  flank  and  rear  if 
they  fulfilled  his  expectations  and  retired  on  Bohemia  before 
Bevern’s  advance. 

Bevern’s  position  was  one  of  considerable  strength.  The 
Oder  and  some  marshy  ground  where  the  Lohe  flowed  into  it 
covered  his  right,  and  a  row  of  fortified  villages,  Pilsnitz  on 
the  right,  Klein  Mochber  and  Schmiedefeld  in  the  centre, 


220  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


Grabischen  and  Kleinburg  on  the  left,  with  the  Lohe  as  wet 
ditch  in  their  front,  made  his  line  strong.  It  had,  however, 
the  defect  of  being  over  long  for  his  numbers.1  Under 
cover  of  a  heavy  cannonade  the  Austrians  threw  bridges 
across  the  Lohe  and  advanced  to  the  attack  (Nov.  22nd). 
Nadasky  at  first  carried  Kleinburg,  but  was  driven  out  of 
it  again  and  brought  to  a  standstill.  At  the  other  end  of 
the  line  there  was  a  desperate  and  equal  struggle  for  the 
village  of  Pilsnitz.  In  the  centre,  however,  the  battle  was 
decided.  A  division  under  General  Sprechor  stormed  the 
Prussian  battery  at  Klein  Mochber,  pushed  on  to  Grabischen 
and  threatened  the  rear  of  the  villages  of  Schmiedefeld  and 
Hoefichen  against  the  front  of  which  dArberg  was  advancing. 
The  combined  attack  rolled  the  Prussian  centre  back  in 
disorder  on  Klein  Gandau  and  this  success  forced  Bevern’s 
right  to  fall  back  to  avoid  being  cut  off,  indeed  the  Austrian 
cavalry  did  catch  and  ride  down  several  of  the  retiring 
battalions.  Had  Nadasky’s  attack  proved  as  successful  as 
that  of  the  centre,  the  Prussians  must  have  been  cut  off  from 
Breslau,  to  which  they  now  fell  back,  leaving  6000  killed  and 
wounded,  3000  prisoners  and  42  guns  on  the  field.  Next 
day  the  relics  of  the  army  crossed  hastily  to  the  Northern  bank 
of  the  Oder  and  began  retiring  on  Glogau.  Bevern  himself, 
reconnoitring  the  Austrian  position,  fell  into  the  hands  of  the 
enemy  and  was  taken  (Nov.  21st).  A  garrison  of  5000  men 
had  been  left  in  Breslau,  but  it  was  mainly  composed  of  im¬ 
pressed  Saxons  and  Silesians  who  had  no  inclination  to  fight 
for  Prussia,  and  General  Lestewitz  had  to  surrender  two  days 
after  the  battle.  His  men  almost  without  exception  took 
service  with  the  Austrians  gladly ;  and  if  the  Silesian  popula¬ 
tion  had  shown  indifference  to  the  Austrian  cause  in  1741, 
there  could  be  no  doubt  about  their  feelings  now.  Fifteen 
years  of  Prussian  rule  had  been  quite  enough,  and  the  re-estab¬ 
lishment  of  the  Austrian  government  was  decidedly  popular. 

But  if  the  victory  of  November  22  nd  had  given  the 
Austrians  possession  of  most  of  Silesia  their  hold  was  not 
to  pass  unchallenged  long.  Frederick  had  secured  himself 
against  any  further  danger  from  Western  Germany,  and 
leaving  Leipzig  on  November  13th,  had  reached  Bautzen  on 
the  2 1st.  Three  days  later,  at  Naumburg  on  the  Queiss,  he 

1  100  squadrons  and  40  battalions,  35,000  men,  as  against  nearly  80,000  Austrians. 


1 757] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


221 


heard  of  Bevern’s  defeat.  On  the  28th  he  halted  at  Parchwitz, 
having  covered  180  miles  in  fifteen  days,  a  very  fine  march 
indeed  in  November.  The  Austrians  decided  not  to  await 
Frederick’s  coming  at  Breslau  but  to  move  out  against  him, 
and  accordingly  they  took  post  across  the  great  road  from 
Liegnitz  to  Breslau,  their  right  at  Nypern,  their  centre  at 
Leuthen,  their  left  resting  on  the  Schweidnitzwasser,  though 
the  cautious  Daun  strongly  urged  that  the  right  bank  of  this 
stream  would  prove  a  much  better  and  stronger  position. 

The  action  on  the  Saale  which  had  enabled  Frederick  to 
turn  back  to  the  help  of  Bevern  had  come  about  through  a 
raid  against  Berlin  by  Hadik  and  3000  men  from  the  Austrian 
division  in  Lusatia.  The  news  of  this  raid,  which  resulted  in 
the  Austrians  levying  a  contribution  of  225,000  thalers  on 
Frederick’s  capital  and  then  retiring  safely  with  their  booty, 
brought  Frederick  back  from  Erfurt  to  Torgau  (Oct.  14th  to 
19th).  With  the  enemy  removed  from  their  front,  Saxe- 
Hildburghausen  and  Soubise  were  at  liberty  for  an  offensive 
movement,  for  which  the  Imperial  commander  was  anxious, 
but  the  Frenchman,  who  had  little  confidence  in  the  military 
qualities  of  his  allies,  disinclined.  Saxe  -  Hildburghausen, 
however,  prevailed  on  Soubise  to  advance  against  the  some¬ 
what  exposed  Prussian  corps  left  to  face  them  under  Keith. 
Before  their  advance  it  fell  back  on  Leipzig  (Oct.  23rd);  but 
Frederick  at  once  turned  back  to  its  aid,  calling  up  Ferdinand 
of  Brunswick  from  Halle  and  recalling  the  divisions  sent  back 
to  Berlin.  On  October  28th,  having  concentrated  some  45 
squadrons  and  27  battalions,  between  20,000  and  25,000  men, 
at  Leipzig,  he  moved  out  against  the  PTench  and  Imperialists, 
who  had  recoiled  behind  the  Saale  and  picked  up  de  Broglie 
and  the  reinforcements  from  Richelieu’s  army  at  Merseburg. 

On  October  31st  the  Prussian  divisions  reached  the  Saale 
to  find  the  passages  at  Weissenfels,  Halle  and  Merseburg  held 
against  them.  Had  the  Franco-Imperialists  stood  their 
ground,  Frederick’s  task  would  have  been  difficult  in  the 
extreme,  but  they  fell  back  in  some  haste  to  Miicheln  and 
took  post  at  the  mouth  of  the  defile  through  the  hills  by 
Merseburg  (Nov.  2nd).  The  Prussians,  thus  given  an 
unopposed  passage,  reconnoitred  the  position  on  the  4th,  but 
finding  it  too  strong  to  make  a  direct  attack  advisable, 
remained  halted  opposite  it,  their  right  at  Bedra,  their  left 


222  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


at  Rossbach.  Their  inactivity  encouraged  Saxe-Hildburghausen 
to  plan  a  bold  move  to  the  South-East,  his  idea  being  to  circle 
round  their  left  so  as  to  get  in  their  rear,  cut  their  communica¬ 
tions  and  drive  them  into  the  river. 

A  division  under  St.  Germain  was  left  at  Miicheln  to  make 
a  show  and  keep  Frederick  occupied  while  the  turning  move¬ 
ment  was  in  progress.  This  started  about  1 1  a.m.,  but  the 
careful  arrangements  and  rapid  movement  which  might  have 
earned  success  were  conspicuous  by  their  absence.  Believing 
the  Prussians  to  be  retreating,  they  pushed  on  without  sending 
out  scouts,  without  adopting  anything  like  a  battle  formation, 
without  even  leaving  haversacks  and  kettles  behind.  Two 
regiments  of  Austrian  cavalry  and  the  cavalry  of  the  Circles 
led,  the  infantry  followed  in  three  columns,  supported  by  10 
French  squadrons  and  covered  on  the  left  by  1  2  more.1  Ex¬ 
pecting  nothing  less  than  an  attack, they  were  pushing  on  steadily 
Eastward  when,  about  3.30,  the  Prussians  suddenly  appeared  on 
their  flank.  A  low  ridge  which  runs  East  and  West  from  Leiha 
and  culminates  in  the  Janus  Hill,  the  point  for  which  the 
Allies  were  making,  had  completely  concealed  Frederick’s 
movements  and  enabled  him  to  surprise  the  over-confident 
Allies.  The  Prussian  attack  was  led  by  Seydlitz,  who,  wheeling 
to  the  right  on  reaching  the  Polzen  Hill  and  circling  round, 
came  sweeping  down  on  the  vanguard  of  cavalry.  The 
cavalry  of  the  Circles  gave  way  at  once,  but  the  Austrian 
cuirassiers  offered  a  gallant  resistance  which  temporarily 
checked  Seydlitz’s  charge  and  gave  time  for  the  five  regiments 
of  French  cavalry  which  were  in  support  to  come  up  on  the 
right  near  Reichartswerben.  However,  Seydlitz  hurled  his 
left  against  them,  while  his  right  engaged  the  Austrian 
cavalry,  and  his  vigorous  onslaught  made  them  all  give  way  : 
they  rallied  on  four  more  regiments  of  French  which  Soubise 
brought  up  from  the  left,  and  even  checked  the  Prussian  front 
line,  but  a  charge  of  Seydlitz’s  reserve  sent  them  all  to  the  right¬ 
about.  Meanwhile  a  Prussian  battery  of  1  8  field  and  4  heavy 
guns  on  the  Janus  Berg  was  pouring  a  heavy  fire  into  the 
surprised  columns,  and  Frederick’s  left  wing  of  infantry,  12 
battalions  under  his  brother  Henry,  was  coming  on  over  the 
slopes  to  the  right  of  the  battery.  Hastily  the  Allied  infantry 

1  The  total  Franco- Imperialist  force  was  51  squadrons  and  65  battalions,  of  which 
16  and  10  formed  St.  Germain’s  division. 


1 757] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


223 


endeavoured  to  deploy  and  to  advance  against  the  Prussian 
positions,  but  the  disorder  in  which  they  had  marched  produced 
hopeless  confusion.  The  regiments  of  Piedmont  and  Mailly, 
the  leaders  of  the  two  columns  which  now  formed  the  right 
of  the  deployed  lines,  and  those  of  Poitou  and  Rohan  of  the 
reserve,  which  had  marched  so  fast  as  to  get  in  between  the 
two  columns  and  so  practically  form  a  third  line,  behaved  well 
and  advanced  steadily.  However,  they  were  met  by  a 
tremendous  fire  from  infantry  and  artillery,  and  as  they 
wavered  Seydlitz’s  squadrons,  which  after  putting  the  hostile 
cavalry  to  the  rout  had  re-formed  in  a  hollow  near  Tagewerben, 
came  charging  in  on  their  right  flank  and  rear.  The  second 
(actually  the  third)  line  gave  way  at  once,  and  in  a  moment 
all  was  hopeless  disorder.  The  troops  of  the  Circles  made  no 
attempt  to  resist,  and  though  one  or  two  isolated  French 
regiments  stood  their  ground  well,  they  were  ridden  down. 
By  4.30  all  was  over.  Some  cavalry  from  the  French  left 
intervened  and  their  charge  gave  the  fugitives  some  respite, 
but  in  the  end  St.  Germain’s  division  was  the  only  body  to 
leave  the  field  in  orderly  formation  :  it  acted  as  rearguard,  and 
covered  the  retreat  by  Langensalza  (Nov.  7th)  to  Hanau. 
Frederick  made  no  attempt  to  pursue ;  he  was  well  content 
with  the  advantage  he  had  gained,  and  with  good  reason. 
With  only  22,000  men  against  36,000  French  and  10  to 
12,000  Imperialists,  he  had  inflicted  on  his  enemies  a  loss  of 
about  3000  killed  and  wounded,  5000  prisoners  and  67  guns. 
But  the  moral  effects  of  the  victory  were  even  greater.  It  is 
difficult  to  say  whether  the  blunders  of  the  Allied  commanders 
or  the  misbehaviour  of  the  troops  was  the  more  discreditable. 
That  of  the  Army  of  the  Circles  might  have  been  anticipated 
by  any  one  acquainted  with  its  organisation  and  utter  want  of 
training  and  discipline.  It  is  not  necessary  to  attribute  it  to 
disaffection,  or  to  pretend  that  the  Darmstadters  and  Wurz- 
burgers  found  it  impossible  to  fight  against  the  “  champion  of 
German  nationality.”  The  Imperial  army  behaved  as  raw 
troops  of  indifferent  quality  are  likely  to  do  when  taken  by 
surprise.  But  that  the  bulk  of  the  French  should  have 
behaved  so  ill  is  indeed  remarkable,  and  speaks  volumes  for  the 
demoralisation  of  their  army.  Maurice  de  Saxe’s  victories 
had  temporarily  restored  its  tone,  but  its  state  in  1757  was 
worse  than  it  had  ever  been  before.  On  the  Prussian  side 


224  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


Frederick  showed  great  coolness  in  letting  the  enemy  commit 
themselves  thoroughly  to  their  turning  movement  before  he 
launched  his  men  at  them  ;  but  the  good  discipline  and  efficiency 
of  the  Prussian  army,  as  shown  in  the  rapidity  with  which 
they  broke  up  their  camp  and  were  ready  for  action  almost 
directly  they  got  their  orders,  the  excellent  fire-discipline  of  the 
infantry,  the  good  work  done  by  the  Prussian  artillery  in 
combination  with  the  other  arms,  and  above  all  the  splendid 
way  in  which  Seydlitz  handled  his  horsemen  and  utilised  to  the 
full  the  chances  afforded  by  what  was  an  ideal  piece  of  ground 
for  cavalry  manoeuvres,  had  even  more  to  do  with  the  result. 

Thus  freed  from  anxiety  as  to  his  right  flank,  Frederick 
could  and  did  retrace  his  steps  to  Silesia.  Too  late  to  save 
Breslau,  he  halted  at  Parchwitz  and  there  picked  up  the 
battered  remnant  of  Bevern’s  corps,  which  the  slackness  of 
Charles  of  Lorraine  had  allowed  to  get  away  unmolested. 
Vigorous  and  stringent  measures  did  something  to  restore  the 
tone  of  the  beaten  army.  Exhortations  to  do  their  duty,  the 
example  of  the  King’s  high  spirit  and  determined  courage, 
appeals  to  their  esprit  de  corps  and  lost  prestige  raised  in  them 
the  desire  to  do  some  deed  to  be  named  with  Rossbach,  and 
the  army  followed  Frederick  cheerfully  when  on  December  4th 
he  moved  to  Neumarkt  and  thence  next  morning  against  the 
Austrian  position  across  the  road  to  Breslau. 

In  thus  bringing  on  a  battle,  Frederick  was  running  great 
risks,  for  the  Austrian  position  was  fairly  strong,  and  their 
force  probably  half  as  large  again  as  his.1 2  On  the  right, 
Lucchesi’s  corps  stretched  from  Nypern  to  Leuthen,  with  an 
outpost  at  Borne  in  its  front  and  its  flank  covered  by  peat¬ 
bogs  and  a  wood.  In  the  centre  was  the  reserve  under 
d’Aremberg,  on  the  left  Nadasky’s  corps,  part  of  which  from 
Sagschiitz  to  the  Schweidnitzwasser  was  drawn  up  en  potence? 
In  front,  South-West  of  Sagschiitz,  was  the  Kiefer  Berg,  a  hill  on 
which  a  large  battery  was  posted  under  the  protection  of  three 
Wiirtemberg  battalions  which  were  not  altogether  trustworthy. 

Leaving  Neumarkt  about  5  a.m.  Frederick  fell  on 

1  The  Prussians  had  128  squadrons,  about  13,000  men,  and  48  battalions, 
24,000  bayonets,  on  the  field.  Lorraine’s  army  mustered  144  squadrons  and  84 
battalions,  and  its  units  were  rather  stronger  than  Frederick’s;  but  something  must 
be  deducted  for  the  garrisons  of  Breslau  and  Liegnitz. 

2  i.e.  wheeled  back  at  an  oblique  angle  to  the  main  line  so  as  to  cover  it. 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


225 


1  757] 

Lucchesi’s  outpost  at  Borne  just  about  daybreak  and  drove  it 
out.  This  made  Lorraine  imagine  that  the  Prussians  intended 
to  attack  his  right,  which  he  too  promptly  reinforced  from  his 
reserves.  The  morning  mists  were  still  heavy,  and  the  rolling 
ground  in  front  also  helped  to  conceal  the  movements  of  the 
Prussians,  who,  leaving  a  small  force  to  feint  against  Nypern 
and  so  attract  Lorraine’s  attention  thither,  were  moving  to 
their  right  in  the  famous  “oblique  order”  which  was  Frederick’s 
great  contribution  to  the  drill-book.  They  had  been  marching 
in  four  columns,  the  twro  outer  ones  composed  of  cavalry,  the 
inner  of  infantry.  The  infantry  now  formed  two  lines,  com¬ 
manded  by  Maurice  of  Dessau  and  General  Retzow,  while 
Ziethen’s  horse  (43  squadrons)  took  post  on  the  right, 
Driesen’s  (40  squadrons)  on  the  left,  each  having  10  squadrons 
of  hussars  in  support,  the  rest  of  the  cavalry  forming  a  general 
reserve  under  Eugene  of  Wiirtemberg.  A  detachment  of 
6  battalions  of  infantry  was  in  close  support  of  Ziethen.  The 
infantry  of  the  first  line  after  deploying  formed  half-right  and 
advanced  in  that  direction,  the  movement  taking  them  obliquely 
across  the  front  of  the  Austrian  position  so  as  to  bring  them 
into  action  against  Nadasky’s  corps.  When  opposite  Sagschiitz 
(about  1  p.m.),  Ziethen  wheeled  to  the  left  and  advanced  against 
the  refused  part  of  Nadasky’s  line,  but  the  Austrian  commander 
was  ready  and  hurled  his  cavalry  upon  Ziethen  with  success, 
the  Prussian  was  driven  back  in  disorder  and  only  saved  by  his 
infantry  supports,  who  checked  Nadasky’s  charge.  Meanwhile 
Wedel  with  the  leading  battalions  of  the  Prussian  main  body 
had  attacked  the  Wiirtembergers  at  the  angle  of  the  Austrian 
line.  The  mistake  of  confiding  this  important  post  to  untrust¬ 
worthy  troops  was  now  apparent.  As  Wedel  came  on,  covered 
by  a  heavy  cannonade,  for  the  Prussians  of  Bevern’s  corps 
having  lost  their  field-guns  at  Breslau  had  been  furnished  with 
heavy  guns  from  the  fortifications  of  Glogau,1  the  Wiirtem- 
bergers  broke  and  fled,  and  Wedel  pushing  on  stormed  the 
1 4  -  gun  battery  on  the  Kiefer  Berg.  Maurice  of  Dessau 
seconded  Wedel’s  efforts,  and  as  Nadasky’s  horse  had  fallen  back 
on  Gohlau  when  checked  by  the  infantry,  the  whole  Austrian 
left  rolled  back  Northward.  Lorraine  now  exerted  himself  to 
rally  them,  and  the  gallant  resistance  of  the  battalions  in 

1  These  were  12-pounders,  the  usual  field-guns  of  the  day  being  6-pounders,  or 
more  often  3-pounders. 

1  5 


226  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757 


Leuthen  village  checked  the  Prussian  advance  long  enough 1  for 
a  new  line  to  be  formed  behind  the  village,  running  from  North 
of  West  to  South  of  East  at  an  angle  of  7  5°  to  the  old  position. 
This  charge  was  covered  by  the  fire  of  a  battery  on  some 
hillocks  to  the  North  of  Leuthen  which  threw  the  left  of  the 
Prussian  infantry  (Retzow’s  division)  into  disorder,  while 
Maurice  of  Dessau  in  the  centre  and  Wedel,  who  with  the  six 
battalions  attached  to  Ziethen  now  formed  the  right  of  the 
line,  were  held  up  by  the  Austrians  in  Leuthen,  now  reinforced 
from  their  original  right.  Lucchesi’s  cavalry  also  came  up 
from  the  same  quarter  and  were  just  charging  in  on  the 
exposed  flank  of  Retzow’s  infantry  when  Frederick  delivered 
the  decisive  stroke  by  hurling  Driesen’s  horse  of  the  left  wing 
from  Radaxdorf  on  the  flank  and  rear  of  Lucchesi.  The 
Austrian  cavalry  were  routed,  and  their  flight  exposed  the 
flank  of  the  new  line,  which  Driesen  promptly  attacked.  The 
whole  Austrian  army  gave  way  in  disorder,  the  defenders  of 
Leuthen  being  cut  off  and  taken,  though  their  resistance 
checked  the  pursuit  and  gave  time  for  the  fugitives  of  the 
right  and  centre  to  get  away.  Similarly  Nadasky’s  rallied 
cavalry  covered  to  some  extent  the  rout  of  the  left,  but  the 
defeat  was  complete,  and  the  Austrians  had  to  thank  the 
darkness  that  they  were  able  to  get  away  and  rally  next  day 
behind  the  Lohe.  They  had  lost  too  heavily  to  think  of  facing 
another  battle,  even  if  they  had  stood  in  Bevern’s  old  position 
at  Breslau  where  they  could  have  utilised  the  heavy  guns, 
which  to  their  cost  they  had  not  taken  to  Leuthen.  But  one 
Leuthen  had  been  enough ;  they  had  lost  27,000  in  killed, 
wounded  and  prisoners  ;  they  had  left  116  guns  behind,  and 
their  fighting  capacities  were  for  the  time  annihilated.  An 
additional  10,000  men  were  left  to  hold  Breslau,  in  other 
words,  to  swell  the  numbers  of  the  prisoners,  for  the  garrison, 
quite  demoralised,  surrendered  on  the  21st  after  a  very  poor 
resistance,  and  Lorraine  withdrew  with  the  rest  of  his  shaken 
army  to  Koniggratz,  which  they  reached  after  a  terrible  and 
exhausting  march.  Liegnitz  copied  Breslau’s  example  at  the 
interval  of  a  week,  and  with  its  fall  Schweidnitz  became  the 
only  Silesian  fortress  still  in  Austrian  hands. 

Frederick,  in  whose  military  career  Leuthen  may  fairly  be 
regarded  as  the  masterpiece,  had  lost  some  6000  men,  but 

1  2.30  to  3.30  p.m. 


1 757] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  I 


227 


Silesia  was  his.  His  daring  in  attacking  such  superior  numbers 
had  been  amply  justified  by  success.  The  feint  against 
Nypern  to  divert  attention  ffom  the  true  attack,  the  refusing 
of  Driesen’s  horse  till  the  moment  when  they  could  be  used 
with  telling  effect,  the  skill  with  which  the  ground  and  the 
mists  were  used  to  conceal  the  risky  move  to  the  right, 
the  able  way  in  which  the  Prussian  artillery  was  handled  in 
support  of  the  infantry  attack  are  much  to  his  credit,  even  if  it 
be  remembered  that  it  was  only  with  the  most  highly  trained 
and  drilled  troops  that  manoeuvres  demanding  such  exactitude 
in  execution  could  be  successfully  practised.  And  once  again 
it  may  be  remarked  that  the  Austrian  love  for  the  defensive 
and  the  want  of  enterprise  betrayed  by  their  commanders  had 
contributed  to  the  Prussian  success.  As  Moltke  has  pointed 
out,1  they  chose  a  position  with  a  river  behind  them,  extended 
their  lines  unduly,  were  taken  in  by  the  feint  on  their  right, 
and  let  themselves  be  beaten  in  detail.  Proper  scouting  should 
have  warned  them  of  the  direction  in  which  the  Prussians  were 
moving,  and  the  ineptitude  which  allowed  Frederick  to  move 
across  their  front  without  a  counter-attack  being  made  is  only 
paralleled  by  the  unwisdom  of  their  move  out  to  Leuthen, 
which  forced  them  to  leave  behind  a  third  of  their  guns, 
including  the  heavier  pieces  of  which  such  good  use  had  been 
made  at  Breslau. 

But  though  this  brilliant  victory  allowed  Frederick  to  end 
the  campaign  of  1 7  5  7  in  possession  of  practically  as  much 
territory  as  he  had  held  at  the  beginning  of  the  year,2  it  must 
be  confessed  that  the  outlook  was  not  promising.  If  his 
tremendous  exertions,  his  three  victories,  his  heavy  losses  in 
officers  and  men — that  of  Schwerin  and  Winterfeldt  alone 
meant  much  to  him— had  only  sufficed  to  ward  off  dangers 
and  leave  him  where  he  had  begun,  what  would  happen  in  the 
next  year  if  Austria  were  to  discover  a  general  capable  of 
doing  more  than  merely  defend,  if  Russia  were  to  take  a 
serious  part  in  the  campaign,  if  the  French  intervention  were 
to  be  directed  with  some  approach  to  capacity  ?  Neither  in 
men  nor  in  money  were  Prussia’s  resources  very  great ;  and 
even  with  Saxony  to  draw  upon  another  such  year  might 
find  P'rederick  near  the  limits  of  his  endurance. 

1  Cf.  Waddington,  ii.  718. 

2  The  Westphalian  provinces  were  the  only  losses. 


CHAPTER  XII 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR —continued 

THE  CAMPAIGNS  OF  1 7  58  AND  1 759 

DISMAYED  only  for  a  moment  by  the  disaster  of  Leuthen,1 
Maria  Theresa  was  soon  busy  with  schemes  for  retriev¬ 
ing  the  failure  of  1757.  Vigorous  measures  were  taken  to 
increase  and  equip  the  broken  army  now  rallying  in  Bohemia 
and  to  make  it  fit  for  service  again,  and  the  Empress  proceeded 
to  discuss  with  her  allies  a  concerted  plan  of  operations  by 
which  the  isolated  and  disjointed  efforts  of  the  previous  year 
might  be  combined  with  happier  result. 

In  Russia  there  was  greater  keenness  on  the  prosecution 
of  the  war  than  in  the  previous  year.  Elizabeth  had  been 
ill  but  had  recovered,  Duke  Peter  had  been  somewhat 
reconciled  to  Austria  by  the  fact  that  Bestuchev,  who  had 
been  intriguing  against  his  succession,  had  been  dismissed 
and  replaced  by  Woronzov;  and  Apraxin’s  misconduct  of  the 
campaign  had  brought  him  before  a  well-deserved  court- 
martial.  After  much  correspondence  it  was  agreed  that  the 
Russian  main  army  should  advance  upon  Posen,  in  which 
district  it  would  threaten  both  Brandenburg  and  Silesia,  and 
would  cover  the  operations  of  a  detached  corps  in  Pomerania. 

France  was  more  inclined  to  repent  of  the  war,  and  there 
seemed  some  chance  that  she  might  withdraw  from  it.  Bernis 
was  talking  of  peace ;  irresolution  personified,  he  was  quite 
overcome  by  the  duties  of  a  post  altogether  beyond  his  limited 
capacities.  But  Louis  XV  and  Madame  de  Pompadour  were 
set  on  a  vigorous  prosecution  of  the  war  in  which  the  King 
felt  his  prestige  to  be  involved.  He  might  have  been  better 
advised  to  content  himself  with  the  mere  furnishing  of  the 
auxiliary  corps  to  Maria  Theresa,  but  to  tamely  accept 
Rossbach  and  retire  from  the  war  would  be  too  humiliating 

1  Cf.  Waddington,  ii.  734. 

228 


KOLIN  June  I81*  1757. 


ROSSBACM  Nov.  5^  1757 


BRESLAU  Nov.  22™*  17 57. 


L.EUTHEN  Dec.5»*  1757. 


J  ENGL  MILES 
2 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


229 


1758] 

and  Louis  was  resolved  to  go  on.  To  decide  on  a  plan 
of  operations  was  more  difficult,  though  both  French  and 
Austrians  looked  upon  the  destruction  of  the  Hanoverian 
army  as  a  necessary  prelude  to  any  attempt  by  the  French 
and  Imperial  armies  to*  move  to  the  assistance  of  the  Austrians 
either  in  Saxony  or  in  Silesia.  The  idea  of  detaching 
Hanover  from  Frederick  by  a  separate  treaty  had  been  put 
forward  again  by  Kaunitz,  but  had  met  with  a  very  decided 
rebuff  from  George  II,  who  was  now  (Feb.  1758)  growing 
extremely  bellicose,  and  had  quite  abandoned  the  idea  of 
following  separate  lines  in  his  dual  capacities  as  Elector  and 
King.  George’s  rejection  of  the  suggested  mediation  of 
Denmark 1  went  far  to  restore  Frederick’s  confidence  in  his 
ally,  a  confidence  which  had  been  somewhat  shaken  by  the 
refusal  of  the  English  ministry  to  employ  their  own  troops  in 
the  continental  war,  or  to  send  a  squadron  into  the  Baltic.2 
Suspicion  of  England’s  motives,  a  fear  that  this  refusal  to 
appear  in  the  Baltic  was  prompted  by  a  wish  to  keep  on 
good  terms  with  Russia,  and  a  dislike  of  the  appearance  of 
subordination  involved  in  the  acceptance  of  a  subsidy,  at  first 
caused  Frederick  to  decline  England’s  offers  of  financial  assist¬ 
ance  ;  but  irksome  though  it  was  to  him  to  admit  it,  he  could 
not  conceal  from  himself  the  fact  that  his  own  resources  were 
by  no  means  capable  of  meeting  the  demands  upon  them,  and 
in  March  he  announced  his  readiness  to  accept  the  proffered 
subsidy  even  though  England  remained  obdurate  against  the 
despatch  of  a  naval  force  to  the  Baltic. 

So  it  was  that  on  April  1  ith  the  lengthy  and  intricate 
negotiations  between  England  and  Prussia  were  brought  to 
a  satisfactory  conclusion  by  the  signature  of  a  new  treaty. 
Both  parties  pledged  themselves  to  make  no  separate  peace 
or  truce  without  consulting  their  ally,  and  England  placed  an 
annual  subsidy  of  £67 0,000  at  the  disposal  of  Frederick  to 
be  devoted  to  the  maintenance  and  augmentation  of  the  forces 
he  was  employing  in  the  common  cause.3  Simultaneously 
George  II  undertook  to  apply  to  Parliament  for  the  supplies 
needed  to  maintain  an  army  of  50,000  German  troops  for 
the  defence  of  Hanover  and  Western  Germany.  The  whole 
Hanoverian  army  had  already  been  taken  into  British  pay 
(Oct.  1757),  and  with  the  addition  of  contingents  from  Hesse 
1  Cf.  Waddington,  iii.  201  ff.  2  Ibid.  iii.  195.  s  Ibid.  iii.  208. 


230  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1758 


and  Brunswick,  and  vigorous  recruiting  in  Hanover,  it  was  found 
possible  to  place  50,000  men  at  the  disposal  of  Prince  Ferdi¬ 
nand  of  Brunswick,  the  general  whom  Frederick,  at  the  request 
of  King  George,  had  sent  to  take  command  of  the  army  of  West¬ 
ern  Germany.  Ferdinand  combined  in  an  unusual  degree  the 
qualities  of  daring  and  of  prudence  so  indispensable  to  a  general. 
His  task  as  the  commander  of  this  army  of  Germans  in  British 
pay,  which  had  to  face  the  simultaneous  attacks  from  West 
and  South  of  greatly  superior  numbers  of  French,  was  one 
of  enormous  difficulty.  Outnumbered  always,  he  nevertheless 
frequently  managed  to  be  in  superior  force  at  the  critical 
point,  and  his  campaigns  are  brilliant  examples  of  a  defence 
carried  on  largely  by  means  of  the  counter-offensive.  Quick 
to  take  advantage  of  his  adversaries’  mistakes,  he  was  not 
cast  down  by  occasional  reverses  or  over-boldened  by  success. 
He  was  patient,  calm,  a  good  administrator  as  well  as  a 
capable  strategist  and  a  skilful  tactician,  and  England  is  to 
be  accounted  fortunate  that  she  was  able  to  borrow  from  her 
ally  the  services  of  one  of  the  very  few  generals  of  the  day 
capable  of  discharging  with  success  the  very  difficult  and 
important  task  she  had  undertaken  as  her  contribution  to  the 
common  cause,  the  defence  of  Western  Germany  against  the 
French.  Both  to  England  and  to  Prussia  Ferdinand’s  services 
were  of  almost  incalculable  value.  One  has  only  to  consider 
how  hopeless  Frederick’s  plight  would  have  been  if  at  the 
time  of  Hochkirch  or  of  Kunersdorf  a  French  army  had  been 
in  the  same  position  as  that  in  which  Richelieu’s  found  itself 
in  October  1757,  even  after  the  none  too  skilfully  conducted 
operations  of  that  year,  to  be  able  to  estimate  what  it  meant 
to  Frederick  to  be  relieved  of  all  further  anxiety  as  to  his 
right  flank  and  rear.  After  the  beginning  of  1758,  Frederick 
was  quite  secure  in  that  quarter.  To  England,  Ferdinand’s 
work  was  not  less  useful.  The  army  with  which  England 
was  protecting  her  ally  against  French  attacks  was  at  the 
same  time  playing  an  indirect  but  still  most  important  part 
in  the  struggle  for  America  and  India  and  maritime  supremacy. 
It  was  preventing  the  French  from  “conquering  America  in 
Hanover,”  it  was  diverting  their  attention  and  their  resources 
away  from  the  sea  and  the  colonies  to  the  hills  and  rivers  of 
Westphalia  and  Hesse;  Montcalm  and  Lally  were  left  almost 
unassisted  in  their  gallant  struggles  in  order  that  there  might 


1 757-8] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


231 


be  men  and  money  for  Soubise,  Contades  and  Broglie,  with 
which  they  might  acquire  for  themselves  and  for  the  French 
arms  a  tarnished  prestige  and  diminished  reputation.  Nor 
did  Pitt  fail  to  grasp  the  opportunity.  He  had  been  so  far 
consistent  in  that  opposition  to  England’s  embarking  on  a 
large  scale  in  continental  warfare  by  which  he  had  achieved 
notoriety  in  his  younger  days  that,  much  to  Frederick’s  chagrin, 
he  steadily  refused  to  employ  British  troops  in  Germany.  In 
April  1758  he  made  the  concession  of  occupying  Embden, 
which  the  French  had  just  evacuated,  with  a  British  garrison  ; 
but  this  would  seem 1  to  have  been  mainly  intended  as  a 
concession  to  Newcastle.  Ferdinand’s  victories  opened  his 
eyes  and  produced  a  complete  change  of  attitude,  none  the 
less  commendable  if  it  certainly  was  an  inconsistency.  Crefeld 
showed  him  that  he  had  in  Ferdinand  a  general  in  whose 
hands  British  troops  could  be  employed  to  the  very  great 
advantage  of  the  special  interests  of  Britain  as  well  as  of  the 
common  cause,  and  the  result  was  the  decision  (June  27th)  to 
despatch  2000  British  cavalry  to  the  Continent,  a  force  almost 
immediately  augmented  to  9000  horse  and  foot.  In  August 
this  contingent  joined  Prince  Ferdinand  at  Coesfeld,2  providing 
his  army  with  an  element  which,  if  it  caused  him  occasional 
uneasiness  in  camp  and  on  outposts,3  was  perhaps  its  most 
efficient  and  valuable  portion  in  the  day  of  battle. 

Ferdinand’s  appearance  on  the  scene  was  not  slow  to 
produce  important  results.  Long  even  before  the  French  and 
Austrians  could  mature  their  plans  for  the  coming  campaign 
the  initiative  had  passed  out  of  their  hands.  The  hitch  in 
the  carrying  out  of  the  Convention  of  Kloster  Zeven  had 
given  rise  to  much  correspondence  between  Richelieu  and  the 
Hanoverian  commander  von  Zastrow.  In  consequence  there 
had  been  great  delay.  The  French  general,  who  had  retired 
from  Halberstadt  upon  Hanover,  had  actually  given  way 
about  the  Hessians,  and  had  agreed  that  they  should  be 
allowed  to  go  home  without  being  disarmed.  This,  however, 
had  not  been  done,  and  when  the  Brunswickers  endeavoured 
to  depart  (Nov.  19th)  they  were  forcibly  prevented  by 
the  Hanoverians.  Five  days  later  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick 
reached  Stade,  took  over  the  command  of  the  Hanoverians 
and  their  allies  and  announced  to  Richelieu  (Nov.  28th) 

1  Cf.  Waddington,  iii.  207.  2  Fortescue,  ii.  341.  2  Ibid.  ii.  559- 


232  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1757-8 


the  rupture  of  the  armistice.  Operations  were  promptly  begun 
again  by  the  bombardment  of  the  French  post  at  Harburg. 
Richelieu,  whose  disposable  forces,  25  squadrons  and  35 
battalions,  barely  amounted  to  17,000  men,  was  not  only 
unable  to  move  to  its  relief  but  even  to  hold  on  at  Liineburg. 
He  fell  back  to  Celle  (Dec.  3rd)  and  drew  in  his  outlying 
detachments,  so  that  by  December  13th,  when  the  Hanoverians 
appeared,  he  had  28,000  men,  52  squadrons  and  54  battalions, 
with  him  and  was  ready  to  accept  battle  if  Ferdinand  offered  it 
Ferdinand’s  army,  however,  needed  rest  and  refitting,  and  was 
hardly  in  a  fit  state  for  a  winter-campaign,  so  he  prudently 
decided  to  fall  back  to  Liineburg  and  there  take  up  winter- 
quarters.  This  allowed  Richelieu  to  remain  on  the  Aller  and 
Broglie  to  occupy  Bremen,  though  Harburg  fell  on  December 
30th  after  a  brave  defence.  On  January  22nd  Richelieu  was 
recalled  to  France.  He  left  his  command  in  a  thoroughly 
bad  condition ;  discipline  was  practically  non-existent,  the 
equipment  of  the  troops  was  most  defective,  their  pay  greatly 
in  arrears,  they  plundered  freely  and  committed  every  possible 
misdemeanour,  resembling  rather  a  horde  of  brigands  than  a 
regular  and  disciplined  army.  In  numbers  the  army  was  still 
formidable,  its  1 3  1  battalions  gave  over  60,000  men  present, 
its  123  squadrons  could  horse  nearly  14,000  sabres,  but  it 
was  not  concentrated  or  in  any  way  posted  with  a  view  to 
resuming  operations.  Moreover,  Clermont,  who  replaced 
Richelieu,  though  well-meaning  and  honest,  had  even  less 
capacity  than  his  predecessor,  in  whose  military  character 
negligence,  greed  and  want  of  devotion  to  duty  rather  than 
want  of  strategic  insight  or  resolution  were  the  most  important 
defects.  Thus  when,  towards  the  end  of  February,  Ferdinand 
of  Brunswick,  after  giving  his  troops  the  rest  and  refitting 
they  so  much  needed,  broke  up  from  his  winter-quarters  and 
advanced  against  Clermont’s  cantonments,  it  was  with  an 
unready  and  demoralised  enemy  that  he  had  to  deal.  Taken 
completely  by  surprise,  Clermont  recoiled  in  such  confusion 
over  the  Weser  that  Ferdinand  resolved  to  push  his  successes 
further.  By  dislodging  the  French  from  Hoya  (Feb.  23rd) 
he  forced  St.  Germain  to  evacuate  Bremen  (Feb.  24th), 
and  moving  on  against  Clermont  he  caused  that  general  to 
retire  from  Hanover  (Feb.  28th)  to  Hameln.  Minden, 
which  was  held  by  some  4000  men,  delayed  Ferdinand  nearly 


T758] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


233 


a  fortnight,  but  on  March  14th  it  fell,  and  four  days  later  the 
advance  was  resumed,  Clermont,  who  had  rallied  about  30,000 
men  and  contemplated  an  attempt  to  save  Minden,  abandoning 
the  idea  of  a  stand  and  retiring  hastily  towards  Wesel.  In 
the  beginning  of  April  the  French  army  of  Westphalia 
recrossed  the  Rhine  at  Wesel,  having  been  ignominiously 
hustled  out  of  Germany  in  less  than  six  weeks.  De  Broglie 
also,  who  had  replaced  Soubise,  was  unable  to  maintain  his 
position  East  of  the  Rhine  and  had  to  follow  Clermont’s 
example,  quitting  Cassel  on  March  21st  and  retiring  to 
Diisseldorf,  while  the  detachment  till  then  in  occupation  of 
East  Friesland  regained  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine  at 
Emmerich  on  March  27th. 

Meanwhile  in  Bohemia  the  Austrians  had  been  making 
great  efforts  to  reinforce  their  main  army,  which,  when  Daun 
took  command  of  it  at  Koniggratz,  March  1 2th,  mustered 
13,000  regular  cavalry,  37,000  infantry,  and  13,000  irregulars. 
The  choice  of  Daun  in  place  of  Charles  of  Lorraine  was  a  wise 
step.  His  military  capacities  were  distinctly  superior  to  those 
of  his  predecessor  in  command,  and  though  he,  too,  was  much 
hampered  by  the  preference  for  the  defensive  and  by  the  want 
of  enterprise,  which  were  the  chief  faults  of  the  Austrian 
army,  he  was  a  tactician  of  resource  and  as  yet  commanded 
the  confidence  of  his  allies. 

However,  it  was  Frederick  who  was  the  first  to  move. 
During  the  winter  he  had  achieved  marvellous  results  in  the 
difficult  task  of  refitting  his  army,  filling  its  depleted  ranks  and 
training  his  new  recruits  into  efficient  soldiers.  Schweidnitz 
had  been  more  or  less  blockaded  all  the  winter,  and  on  April 
2nd  the  blockade  was  converted  into  a  siege.  General 
Thiirheim  made  a  gallant  defence,  and  when  on  the  16th  a 
successful  assault  on  the  all-important  Gallows  Fort  forced 
the  fortress  to  surrender,  its  garrison  of  8000  men  had  been 
reduced  to  5000.  Daun  had  found  it  impossible  to  come  to 
its  relief ;  his  preparations  for  a  move  were  not  complete,  and 
Loudoun,  who  was  in  command  of  the  advanced  detachments 
near  Branau,  was  driven  in  by  superior  forces  on  Potisch  and 
prevented  from  attempting  any  diversion  in  favour  of  the 
garrison.  With  Silesia  thus  cleared  of  Austrians,  Frederick 
resolved  upon  an  invasion  of  Moravia,  which,  if  successful,  would 
allow  him  to  threaten  Vienna,  which  in  any  case  would  bring 


234  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1758 


him  into  fertile  and  unexhausted  country  and  would  draw  the 
Austrians  away  from  the  Oder,  in  which  direction  the  Russians 
were  to  be  expected.  Accordingly  in  the  last  week  of  April 
the  Prussians  moved  off  to  Neisse  and  entering  Moravia  in  two 
columns  by  Troppau  and  Jaegerndorf,  united  before  Olmiitz  on 
May  5  th.  The  move  created  great  alarm  in  Vienna,  where  it  was 
believed  1  that  Frederick  would  merely  mask  Olmiitz  and  push 
on  to  the  capital  itself ;  and  it  was  quite  unlooked  for  by  Daun, 
who  was  expecting  Frederick  to  invade  Bohemia  in  co-operation 
with  Prince  Henry  and  the  30,000  Prussians  in  Saxony.  Thus 
it  was  not  till  April  29th  that  the  Austrian  main  body  con¬ 
centrated  at  Skalitz  and  moved  into  Moravia,  20,000  men 
under  General  Harsch  being  left  to  guard  Bohemia.  On 
May  5  th  Daun  took  post  at  Leutomischl  near  the  Bohemio- 
Moravian  boundary,  and  there  remained  sometime,  using  the 
light  troops  under  von  Jahnus  and  Loudoun  to  harass  the 
Prussian  communications,  in  which  they  displayed  untiring 
energy  and  skill. 

Urged  on  by  orders  from  Vienna  that  Olmiitz  must  be  re¬ 
lieved,  Daun  at  length  moved  up  to  Gewitsch,  where  he  was 
only  two  marches  from  the  fortress  (end  of  May).  Now 
began  a  somewhat  intricate  series  of  manoeuvres ;  Daun  kept 
on  shifting  from  one  camp  to  another,  hoping  thus  to  occupy 
the  Prussian  covering  army  and,  if  possible,  induce  it  to  attack 
him  in  one  of  the  strong  positions  he  loved,  or,  at  any 
rate,  to  distract  it  and  prevent  the  rapid  advance  of  the  siege- 
works.  These  were  not  progressing  very  rapidly.  Not  till 
May  20th  did  the  siege  artillery  arrive,  and  the  trenches  were 
not  opened  till  eight  days  later.  The  Prussians  did  not  shine 
in  siege-craft ;  their  engineers  were  bad,  and  the  activity  of  the 
Austrian  light  troops  on  the  lines  of  communication  proved 
a  useful  aid  to  the  dash  and  energy  with  which  Marshall  and 
his  garrison  made  sorties.  It  was  felt  that  much  would  depend 
on  the  safe  arrival  of  a  vast  convoy  of  3000  waggons, 
bringing  ammunition  and  all  kinds  of  military  stores,  which 
set  out  from  Neisse  on  June  21st  escorted  by  8000  men, 
recruits,  convalescents,  drafts  from  Silesian  garrisons  and  other 
details. 

To  intercept  this  all-important  train  Loudoun,  who  had 
some  4000  men,  was  ordered  to  take  post  on  its  line  of  route, 

1  Waddington,  iii.  222 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


235 


T  7  58] 

another  5000  men  under  Siskovitch  being  detached  from 
Daun’s  main  body  to  join  him.  On  June  27th  Loudoun  was 
at  Sternberg,  not  far  from  the  Domstadtl  Pass,  and  next  morning 
the  unwieldy  convoy  advancing  from  Bautsch  found  its  passage 
disputed  near  Guntersdorf.  There  was  a  sharp  fight.  At  first 
the  Austrians  had  the  upper  hand,  but  Siskovitch  had  gone 
astray  and  his  failure  to  appear  allowed  Colonel  Mosel  to  thrust 
the  Austrians  aside,  and  that  evening  the  convoy  straggled 
into  Neudorffl,  where  it  found  Ziethen,  who  had  been  sent 
out  with  3000  men  to  bring  it  in.  But  it  had  been  so 
much  shaken  by  the  rough  handling  it  had  received  that  it 
needed  rest  and  could  not  resume  its  march  till  the  30th;  and 
then  as  its  leading  waggons  were  reaching  the  Domstadtl  Pass, 
Siskovitch,  whom  the  day’s  delay  had  allowed  to  retrace  his 
steps,  assailed  it  on  the  left,  Loudoun  joining  in  from  the  right. 
Some  200  waggons  managed  to  get  through,  the  rest  were 
forced  to  halt  and  laager,  and  ultimately  fell  into  Loudoun’s  hands 
after  a  stubborn  fight,  which  cost  the  Austrians  over  1000 
men  but  made  the  relief  of  Olmiitz  a  certainty.  Not  only  had 
the  Prussians  lost  over  4000  men  killed,  wounded  and  taken, 
while  Ziethen  had  had  to  fall  back  on  Troppau  to  avoid  being 
taken  and  was  thus  severed  from  the  King,  but  the  stores  the 
convoy  was  bringing  had  been  absolutely  essential  to  the 
success  of  the  siege. 

If  Frederick  must  be  held  largely  responsible  for  the  loss 
of  the  convoy,  which  he  had  done  practically  nothing  to  assist, 
allowing  Daun  to  occupy  his  attention,  it  was  a  bold  move  he 
took  in  this  extremity.  The  road  back  to  Silesia  was  beset  by 
the  Austrians,  but  against  a  move  into  Bohemia  they  were  not 
so  well  prepared,  and  it  would  take  him  through  their  country 
in  which  he  could  exist  at  their  expense.  Accordingly  on 
July  2nd  he  moved  away  West,  Keith  leading  one  column  by 
Littau  and  Trubau,  the  King  taking  the  road  by  Konitz  to 
Zittau.  The  siege-train  had  for  the  most  part  to  be  left 
behind,  as  to  have  taken  it  would  have  impeded  the  rate  of  pro¬ 
gress  and  allowed  Daun  to  intercept  the  march  on  Koniggratz. 
Daun’s  manoeuvres  to  draw  Frederick  off  from  aiding  the  con¬ 
voy  had  brought  him  to  the  South-East  of  Olmiitz  when  the 
siege  was  raised,  and  he  failed  to  begin  the  pursuit  till  the  7th, 
thus  giving  Frederick  so  much  start  that  despite  all  the  efforts 
of  Loudoun  and  Buccow  and  the  light  troops  to  check  their 


236  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1758 


march,  the  Prussians  reached  Koniggratz  on  July  14th,  Daun 
being  still  several  marches  in  rear. 

At  Koniggratz  the  Prussians  remained  for  ten  days,  Daun 
though  decidedly  superior  in  numbers1  not  feeling  inclined  to 
hurl  his  men  against  the  strong  entrenchments  he  had  himself 
constructed  earlier  in  the  year.  In  this  he  was  probably  wise, 
but  he  certainly  ought  to  have  brought  Frederick  to  action 
when  the  news  that  the  Russians  were  nearing  the  Oder 
forced  the  King  to  evacuate  Koniggratz  (July  25th).  Daun 
had  beset  the  three  main  roads  to  Silesia,  but  Frederick 
tricked  him  by  taking  instead  the(  bad  road  by  Skalitz,  Nachod 
and  Grtissau  to  Landshut  (Aug.  9th).  When  he  saw  the 
Prussians  in  full  retreat,  Daun  ought  certainly  to  have  risked 
something  on  a  battle  which  might  ruin  the  Prussian  army, 
since  even  victory  could  only  give  them  a  free  retreat. 

But  even  when  Frederick  had  left  Landshut  (Aug.  11th) 
with  1  5,000  men  and  was  pushing  across  Lusatia  to  the  assist¬ 
ance  of  his  hard-pressed  lieutenant  on  the  Oder,  Dohna,  Daun’s 
movements  still  left  much  to  be  desired.  If  it  was  useless  to  try 
to  follow  Frederick — and  it  probably  was,  for  Daun  was  never 
a  rapid  marcher — he  might  at  least  have  crushed  the  40,000 
Prussians  left  in  Silesia  under  Keith.  But  this  had  been  tried 
in  1 7  5  7  and  the  result  had  been  Leuthen  ;  Daun  therefore 
preferred  to  move  to  Saxony  and  see  if,  with  the  assistance  of 
the  Austrian  corps  in  Northern  Bohemia  and  of  the  reorganised 
but  still  somewhat  indifferent  Imperial  army  now,  under  the 
command  of  the  Duke  of  Zweibriicken,  which  had  come  up 
to  the  frontier  of  Saxony,  he  could  drive  Prince  Henry  and 
his  30,000  Prussians  out  that  country.  This  plan  if  carried 
out  with  energy  and  resolution  promised  well  enough ;  but 
Daun  not  only  moved  at  the  rate  of  only  nine  miles  a  day,2 
but  he  left  large  detachments  inactive  in  Silesia  to  watch 
Keith,  from  whom  no  forward  movement  was  to  be  feared ; 
and  when  he  did  gain  touch  with  the  Imperial  army  which 
had  forced  Prince  Henry  back  on  Gahmig  near  Dresden,  he 
failed  to  attack  but  stood  tamely  on  the  defensive  at  Stolpen 
and  Radeburg,  covering  Bohemia  against  an  attack  with 
which  it  was  not  threatened.  This  extraordinary  strategy 

1  Waddington  (iii.  242)  gives  the  Austrian  force  as  70,000,  the  Prussian  as  40,000. 

2  Frederick  did  twenty-two  miles  a  day  when  moving  back  to  Saxony  after 
Zorndorf. 


r758] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


237 


was  not  the  high  road  to  the  recovery  of  Silesia,  but  it 
should  not  be  laid  at  the  door  of  the  authorities  at  Vienna, 
who  urged  in  strong  terms  the  need  for  prompt  and  vigorous 
action.  If  Daun  had  brought  up  every  available  man, 
even  if  he  still  shrank  from  a  direct  assault  on  the  strong 
position  at  Gahmig,  he  ought  to  have  been  able  to  detach  a 
corps  against  Dresden,  by  which  means  he  would  have  given 
Prince  Henry  the  choice  between  the  equally  distasteful 
alternatives  of  losing  Dresden  and  of  fighting  a  battle  to 
save  it  against  a  very  much  stronger  force.  But  Daun  as 
little  realised  the  importance  of  concentrating  his  forces  to 
secure  any  particular  object  as  he  did  the  value  of  promptitude 
and  decision  in  action.  He  failed  to  concentrate  all  the  troops 
available,  he  equally  failed  to  employ  those  he  had  with  him 
to  turn  his  opportunities  to  account. 

Very  different  was  Frederick’s  conduct  at  this  crisis.  If 
in  the  Third  Silesian  War  his  strategy  was  not  always  above 
criticism,  if  he  owed  much  to  the  extraordinary  blunders  of  his 
opponents,  in  energy  and  in  resolution  at  least  he  was  never 
deficient.  He  never  hesitated  about  striking  a  blow  in  season  ; 
he  never  allowed  the  prospect  of  losing  men  to  deter  him  from 
purchasing  important  advantages  at  the  cost  of  a  few  hundred 
lives.  And  rarely  did  he  show  as  brilliant  an  example  of 
determination  and  energy  as  in  the  critical  month  of  August 
1758.  Realising  that  Fermor’s  advance  must  not  only 
be  promptly  checked,  but  that  a  decisive  victory  over  the 
Russians  was  very  essential  to  Prussia  at  that  juncture,  he 
hastened  by  forced  marches  to  Dohna’s  assistance.  Nine  days 
after  leaving  Landshut  he  reached  Frankfort  on  the  Oder 
(Aug.  20th).  On  the  21st  he  joined  Dohna,  who  had  fallen 
back  behind  the  river  to  Gorgast,  just  opposite  Ciistrin,  which 
the  Russians  had  been  attacking  since  the  15  th. 

So  far  Fermor  had  shown  himself  but  little  improvement 
on  Apraxin.  After  occupying  East  Prussia  in  January  without 
encountering  any  serious  opposition,  he  had  spent  the  next 
five  months  in  all  but  total  inaction.  Not  till  the  beginning 
of  July  had  the  Russians  at  last  advanced  to  Posen,  ravaging 
the  country  they  passed  through  with  equal  thoroughness  and 
brutality.  Still,  though  they  thus  inflicted  much  injury  on 
their  enemies,  they  made  these  districts  quite  useless  to  them¬ 
selves  as  a  possible  source  of  supplies.  It  is  equally  impossible 


238  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1758 


to  perceive  the  object  of  Fermor  in  attacking  Clistrin. 
Observance  of  the  elementary  rules  of  strategy  might  have 
shown  him  that  his  proper  objective  was  the  army  under 
Dohna,  which  had  fallen  back  as  he  advanced,  and  was  now  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  Oder.  Similarly  a  move  into  Pomerania, 
which  would  have  enabled  him  to  co-operate  more  effectively 
with  the  Swedes,  might  have  resulted  in  the  reduction  of 
Colberg  and  Stettin,  and  so  obtained  a  base  in  Eastern 
Pomerania  which  would  have  given  the  Russians  speedy  com¬ 
munication  by  sea  with  their  capital,  and  enabled  them  to 
escape  the  long  overland  journey  across  the  miserable  roads 
of  Poland.  By  sitting  down  before  Clistrin,  Fermor  played 
into  the  hands  of  Frederick,  especially  as  he  at  the  same 
time  detached  1 2,000  men  under  General  Rumanjev  to 
occupy  Stargard  and  establish  communications  with  the 
Swedes. 

Frederick  was  not  slow  to  act;  directly  his  own  division 
came  up,  although  in  ten  days  they  had  covered  150  miles,  he 
at  once  set  his  whole  army  in  motion  and,  after  feinting  against 
the  Russians’  bridge  at  Schaumburg,  established  a  pontoon 
bridge  at  Gusteliese,  10  miles  below  Clistrin,  and  there 
transferred  his  troops  to  the  right  bank  of  the  Oder 
(Aug.  22nd  to  23rd).  The  evening  of  the  23rd  found  him 
at  Klossow,  the  Prussians  having  thus  interposed  themselves 
between  Fermor  and  Rumanjev’s  detached  division.  Next 
day  Frederick  advanced  to  Neu  Damm  on  the  Mietzel  and 
was  successful  in  securing  the  passage  of  that  river  at  that 
place,  though  the  Cossacks  managed  to  forestall  him  at 
Darmietzel  and  Klitsdorf  and  to  destroy  those  bridges. 
Meanwhile  Fermor  had  raised  the  siege  of  Clistrin  and  moved 
up  to  Quartschen  just  South  of  the  Mietzel  (Aug.  23rd), 
apparently  expecting  a  direct  attack  across  that  stream. 

However,  this  was  far  from  being  Frederick’s  intention. 
A  direct  attack  across  the  Mietzel  would  have  in  any  case 
been  a  most  difficult  and  risky  operation  ;  it  would,  moreover, 
have  robbed  him  of  the  advantages  he  might  hope  to  gain 
from  his  superiority  in  cavalry.  In  this  arm  he  was  very 
strong,  his  83  squadrons  giving  him  12,000  horsemen, 
nearly  double  the  numbers  of  the  Russian  cavalry,  even 
when  to  Fermor’s  3300  regulars  are  added  the  3000  Cossacks. 
For  cavalry  operations  the  ground  in  rear  of  the  Russian 


1 75&] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS1  WAR.  II 


239 


position,  the  wide  and  open  plain  to  the  South  of  Zorndorf 
and  Wilkersdorf  was  far  better  adapted  and  it  was  there  that 
Frederick  meant  to  engage.  But  to  gain  access  to  this 
country  it  was  necessary  to  embark  on  one  of  the  wide  turning 
movements  which  had  succeeded  so  well  at  Leuthen  and  at 
Prague.  Accordingly  at  dawn  on  August  25  th  the  Prussian 
army,  12,000  cavalry  and  25,000  infantry  (38  battalions) 
crossed  the  Mietzel  at  Neu  Damm,  well  to  the  East  of  the 
Russian  position,  and,  covered  from  the  Russian  scouts  by 
the  forest  of  Massin,  pushed  Southward  till  they  emerged  in  the 
open  again  at  Balzlow.  Thence  they  continued  their  move 
till  past  Wilkersdorf,  when  a  turn  to  the  right  enabled  them  to 
deploy  for  battle  in  the  position  Frederick  had  selected,  the 
open  ground  South  of  Zorndorf.  With  this  lengthy  movement 
the  Russians  made  practically  no  attempt  to  interfere,  although 
to  an  enterprising  adversary  it  offered  many  promising 
opportunities  for  a  brisk  counter-stroke.  But  Fermor  would 
appear  to  have  been  too  much  occupied  with  altering  his  own 
dispositions  to  venture  on  anything  so  spirited,  and  he  thus 
tamely  allowed  Frederick  to  unopposed  take  up  a  position  in 
which  he  was  at  once  in  touch  with  his  own  base,  Ciistrin,  and 
between  the  Russian  main  body  and  its  baggage  at  Klein 
Cammin.  It  is  possible  that,  as  some  authorities  have  argued, 
this  success  should  have  contented  Frederick.  Fermor,  once 
his  baggage  had  fallen  into  Prussian  hands,  could  not  have 
retained  his  position,  but  must  have  either  attacked  or  retired 
at  once.  But  Frederick  above  all  wanted  a  victory  in  a 
pitched  battle,  and  he  attacked  promptly,  strong  as  the 
Russian  position  proved  to  be,  because  delay  would  have 
allowed  Fermor  to  reinforce  his  42,000  men  by  the  12,000 
troops  detached  under  Rumanjev. 

The  formation  of  the  Russian  army  at  Zorndorf  has  given 
rise  to  much  controversy.  They  had  certainly  spent  the  night 
in  one  of  those  square  formations  in  which  they  were  accus¬ 
tomed  to  encounter  Tartars  and  other  mounted  enemies  whose 
mobility  enabled  them  to  change  the  point  of  attack  with  a 
celerity  greater  than  that  with  which  the  indifferently  trained 
Russians  could  face  about  to  meet  them.  For  such  warfare  it 
had  great  advantages,  but  against  artillery  it  provided  an  ideal 
target,  and  it  was,  of  course,  most  cumbrous  and  liable  to 
become  disordered,  and  it  seems  improbable  that  in  the  battle 


240  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1758 


it  was  really  the  formation  adopted  by  Fermor.1  Probably  the 
Russians  had  changed  front  from  North  to  South  but  had  left 
a  few  battalions  covering  the  ends  of  the  two  lines  in  which 
the  bulk  of  the  infantry  were  formed.  The  cavalry  were 
posted  behind  the  infantry,  who  were  closely  massed  on  a 
narrow  front  on  the  sandy  plateau  North  of  Zorndorf,  the 
Western  end  of  which  is  marked  by  the  ravine  of  the 
Zabergrund,  the  Eastern  or  left  end  by  the  village  of  Zicher 
just  beyond  the  similar  ravine  of  the  Langerbruck  or  Doppel- 
grund.  Yet  a  third  of  these  ravines  down  which  marshy 
brooks  flowed  to  the  Mietzel,  the  Galgengrund,  divided  the 
Russian  right  from  their  centre. 

The  Prussians  opened  the  action  with  a  brisk  and  effective 
cannonade  of  about  an  hour’s  duration,  after  which  the 
infantry  of  their  left  advanced  against  the  Russian  right  on 
the  Fuchsberg.  The  8  battalions  of  the  advance-guard, 
East  Prussians  under  Manteuffel,  led  the  way,  with  the  left 
wing  of  the  first  line,  10  battalions  under  Kanitz,  in  support. 
Unluckily  for  the  Prussians,  the  flames  and  smoke  from  the 
burning  village  of  Zorndorf,  to  which  the  retreating  Cossacks 
had  set  fire,  interposed  between  Manteuffel  and  Kanitz  and 
caused  them  to  diverge,  so  that  Kanitz  instead  of  acting  as  a 
support  to  Manteuffel  came  up  on  his  right  flank.  Thus  the 
Prussian  attack,  which  should  have  been  delivered  by  a  fairly 
solid  mass,  developed  into  the  advance  of  a  long  and  thin 
deployed  line  which  was  soon  brought  to  a  standstill  by  the 
heavy  fire  poured  into  it  by  the  Russians.  A  charge  by  the 
cavalry  of  Fermor’s  right  sent  Manteuffel’s  wavering  battalions 
flying  back  in  disorder  behind  Zorndorf,  the  greater  part  of 
Kanitz’s  division  becoming  involved  in  their  flight.  Had  it 
not  been  for  the  Prussian  cavalry,  with  which  Seydlitz  and 
Maurice  of  Dessau  hastened  to  the  rescue,  it  would  have  gone 
hard  with  Manteuffel,  even  with  this  prompt  succour  he 
lost  26  guns.  Still  the  success  of  the  Russian  right  was 
a  double-edged  triumph ;  as  their  infantry  pressed  forward 
after  the  fugitives  of  Manteuffel  and  Kanitz,  Seydlitz’s  heavy 
cavalry  came  thundering  in  upon  them,  while  Maurice  and  his 
dragoons  routed  and  drove  off  the  Russian  cavalry.  Taken 
at  a  great  disadvantage  and  in  considerable  disorder,  the 
Russian  infantry  made  a  desperate  but  hopeless  resistance. 

1  Waddington,  iii  263. 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


241 


1758] 

After  a  horrible  carnage  they  were  all  but  exterminated,  and 
only  some  broken  remnants  managed  to  escape. 

But  the  battle  was  far  from  finished.  Behind  the 
Galgengrund  the  Russian  centre  stood  firm,  and  their  left 
held  unshaken  hold  of  the  ground  between  the  Langerbruck 
and  Zicher.  Against  this  last  quarter  of  the  enemy’s  position 
Frederick  now  prepared  to  advance,  hoping  to  hurl  the 
Russians  back  upon  the  unfordable  Mietzel,  now  doubly 
impassable  because  the  bridges  had  all  been  burnt.  As  before, 
he  paved  the  way  for  his  infantry  attack  by  a  cannonade,  and 
between  one  and  two  o’clock  his  intact  right,  supported  on  the 
left  by  those  of  Kanitz’s  battalions  which  had  managed  to 
rally,  moved  forward  to  the  attack.  A  counter-attack  by  the 
Russian  cuirassiers,  at  first  brilliantly  successful,  was  checked 
by  the  Prussian  dragoons  ;  but  the  Russian  infantry  not  merely 
offered  a  stubborn  resistance  but  put  to  flight  the  greater  part 
of  the  Prussian  infantry,  who  fled  back  to  Wilkersdorf  and  re¬ 
fused  to  be  led  forward  again.1  Fortunately  for  Frederick  the 
battalions  he  had  brought  with  him  from  Silesia  stood  firm 
when  their  comrades  fled,  and  their  desperate  prowess  aided 
by  the  repeated  charges  of  the  Prussian  cavalry  at  last 
succeeded  in  shattering  the  Russian  left  and  driving  its 
fragments  back  upon  the  Mietzel,  though  even  then  the 
Russian  centre  remained  firm  in  its  position  behind  the 
Galgengrund  and  was  still  unshaken  when  night  and  exhaus¬ 
tion  put  an  end  to  the  stubborn  conflict.  Both  armies  had 
fought  to  a  standstill,  and  the  arrival  of  only  a  small  re¬ 
inforcement  for  either  side  would  probably  have  turned  the 
doubtful  into  a  victorious  issue. 

However,  no  reinforcements  appeared,  and  after  the  two 
armies  had  spent  the  next  day  (Aug.  26th)  in  watching  each 
other  without  attempting  to  renew  the  engagement,  Fermor 
slipped  away  during  the  night  of  August  26th  to  27th, 
passing  to  the  South  of  the  Prussians,  who  made  no  effort  to 

1  The  majority  of  these  men  would  seem  to  have  belonged  to  East  Prussia,  which 
province,  it  should  be  mentioned,  had  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  Russians  after  a 
remarkably  feeble  resistance,  greatly  to  Frederick’s  disgust  (cf.  Waddington,  iii.  249). 
The  troops  who  had  accompanied  Frederick  from  Silesia,  whose  conduct  was  so 
very  different,  seem  to  have  included  several  battalions  of  the  territorial  regiments 
of  the  Oder  valley,  so  that  their  steadfast  resistance  must  be  partly  attributed  to  a 
desire  for  revenge  on  the  Russian  devastators  of  their  homes,  for  evidence  of  the 
Russians’  handiwork  was  only  too  prominent. 

16 


242  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEExNTH  CENTURY  [1758 


interrupt  the  movement.  His  retreat  was  a  tacit  admission  of 
defeat,  but  it  allowed  him  to  rejoin  his  baggage  at  Klein 
Cammin,  whence  a  few  days  later  he  retired  to  Landsberg. 
There  Rumanjev  rejoined  him  ;  but  this  reinforcement,  whose 
presence  on  the  26th  would  have  probably  enabled  Fermor  to 
turn  the  tables  on  his  conquerers,  was  too  late  to  effect  any¬ 
thing  decisive.  Frederick  having  gained  his  victory  had  gone 
off  again  to  Lusatia,  but  he  left  Dohna  with  a  force  strong 
enough  to  hold  Fermor  in  check ;  at  least  Zorndorf  had 
deprived  the  Russian  commander  of  all  wish  for  another 
battle,  even  against  Dohna,  and  he  remained  practically  in¬ 
active  until  the  beginning  of  November  when  the  Russians  set 
their  faces  homeward,  having  rather  shown  what  they  might 
do  against  Prussia,  if  only  they  were  properly  handled,  than 
managed  to  obtain  any  very  substantial  gain  for  the  cause  of 
the  Allies. 

Thus  Zorndorf,  evenly  contested  as  it  had  been  and 
narrow  as  was  the  margin  which  had  interposed  between 
Frederick  and  failure,  must  be  accounted  a  real  victory  for 
Prussia.  Out  of  an  army  of  37,000,  nearly  a  tenth  were 
killed  (3600)  and  the  wounded  and  missing  numbered  almost 
8000  more,  so  that  it  is  not  wonderful  that  the  Prussians 
found  themselves  incapable  of  interfering  with  Fermor’s  move 
on  Klein  Cammin  on  the  day  after  the  battle.  The  Russian 
losses  were  even  heavier,  5000  killed  and  prisoners,  13,000 
wounded,  with  no  less  than  103  guns,  though  they  had,  it  is 
true,  captured  26  pieces  from  Manteuffel.  The  Prussian 
victory  was  mainly  due  to  the  cavalry  and  to  the  infantry 
which  Frederick  had  brought  with  him  ;  but  the  conduct  of  the 
infantry  as  a  whole  shows  that  the  strain  of  the  war  was 
beginning  to  be  felt,  the  gaps  which  Kolin  and  Breslau  had 
made  had  been  filled  after  a  fashion,  but  the  quality  was  not 
the  same.  Frederick  could  no  longer  rely  quite  so  confidently 
on  his  troops  to  retrieve  any  errors  he  might  make,  and  he  had 
had  an  object-lesson  in  the  endurance  and  determination  of  the 
Russians.  Clumsy  in  manoeuvring,  lacking  something  of  drill 
and  discipline,  their  fighting  power  and  tenacity  made  them 
formidable  enemies. 

It  had  not  been  part  of  Frederick’s  purpose  to  pursue  the 
Russians.  A  more  urgent  task  called  him  elsewhere.  By 
forced  marches  he  hastened  back  to  the  succour  of  Prince 


t7581 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


243 


Henry,  and  on  September  1  2th  he  was  again  in  touch  with  his 
brother.  He  had  to  thank  Daun’s  undue  caution  that  Prince 
Henry  was  there  to  welcome  him,  for  the  Austrian  general, 
especially  after  his  junction  with  the  40,000  men  of  the  Army 
of  the  Empire,  had  been  in  ample  force  to  have  crushed  the 
Prince.  But  he  had  delayed  ;  and  though  urgent  orders  from 
Vienna  had  at  last  brought  him  to  the  point  of  being  about  to 
deliver  the  belated  blow,  the  arrival  of  Frederick  caused  him 
to  relapse  into  a  strict  defensive  from  which  Frederick  was 
unable  to  lure  him.  Firmly  posted  at  Stolpen,  Daun  had  his 
left  at  Pirna  covered  by  the  Elbe,  while  on  the  other  wing  he 
had  Loudoun  at  Bautzen.  Meanwhile  an  Austrian  corps 
under  Harsch  was  pressing  hard  upon  Neisse,  and  Frederick, 
growing  anxious  for  that  fortress,  moved  out  to  Bischofswerda, 
pushing  Retzow  on  ahead  to  Hochkirch,  which  caused  Loudoun 
to  retire  from  Bautzen  (Oct.  1st).  Supposing  the  movement 
to  be  aimed  at  his  own  magazines  at  Zittau,  Daun  thereupon 
evacuated  Stolpen  (Oct.  5th)  and  retired  by  Neustadt  to 
Kittlitz,  hoping  thereby  to  cut  Fredericks  communications 
with  Silesia.  It  was  a  risky  move  to  undertake  in  such  close 
proximity  to  the  Prussian  army  along  whose  front  it  was 
necessary  to  pass,  but  Lacy’s  staff  work  and  arrangements 
were  so  admirable  that  the  movement  was  practically  complete 
before  Frederick  perceived  it. 

At  Kittlitz,  Daun  covered  both  the  road  to  Silesia  by 
Gorlitz  and  that  to  Bohemia  by  Zittau.  Frederick  came  up 
to  Bautzen  on  the  7th,  and  then,  being  increasingly  anxious 
for  Neisse,  moved  on  to  Hochkirch  (Oct.  10th),  meaning  to 
push  on  across  Daun’s  front,  gain  his  flank,  and  so  interpose 
between  him  and  Silesia.  However,  he  could  not  at  once 
carry  out  this  daring  scheme,  for  he  found  it  necessary  to 
remain  halted  at  Hochkirch  for  three  days,  probably  in  order 
to  allow  his  provision  trains  to  come  up  and  rejoin  him.  This 
halt  gave  Daun  an  opportunity  of  which  he  for  once  did  not 
fail  to  avail  himself.  The  Hochkirch  position  was  dominated 
by  a  hill  to  the  North-East,  the  Stromberg,  which  Retzow  had 
neglected  to  occupy  and  which  was  in  possession  of  a  strong 
Austrian  detachment.  Notwithstanding  this  Frederick  pro¬ 
ceeded  to  pitch  his  camp  almost  under  its  guns,  despite  the 
repulse  by  the  Austrians  of  an  attempt  to  gain  possession 
of  the  hill  (Oct.  11th).  Further,  with  an  access  of  over- 


244  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1758 


confidence  which  was  to  cost  him  dear,  he  allowed  Retzow  and 
the  vanguard  (10,000  men)  to  push  on  beyond  the  Lobau- 
wasser  to  the  Weissenberg,  and  thus  to  put  a  gap  of  fully  four 
miles  between  them  and  the  nearest  support,  Keith's  division, 
which  lay  between  Lauska  and  the  King’s  headquarters  at 
Rodewitz,  while  the  rearguard,  which  in  the  battle  formed 
the  right,  was  at  Hochkirch,  some  two  miles  to  the  South  of 
Rodewitz. 

Daun,  it  is  true,  was  the  very  personification  of  caution,  but 
for  once  Frederick  had  overestimated  his  enemy’s  lack  of  enter¬ 
prise;  and  though  warned  by  more  than  one  of  his  lieutenants 
of  the  risk  he  was  running,  he  refused  to  alter  his  position ;  his 
belief  that  Daun  feared  him  far  too  much  to  ever  contemplate 
taking  the  offensive  against  him  was  only  increased  by 
the  elaborate  fortification  of  the  Austrian  camp,  which  in 
reality  served  as  the  cover  for  preparations  for  an  attack. 
During  the  night  of  October  13th/ 14th  the  Austrian  mea¬ 
sures  were  carried  out  with  unusual  secrecy  and  despatch : 
Loudoun  led  the  left  round  to  the  South-West  of  Hochkirch, 
so  that  it  outflanked  the  Prussian  right,  the  Austrian  centre 
stood  ready  to  fall  on  Hochkirch  from  the  South-East, 
while  d’Aremberg  and  their  right  prepared  to  join  in  by 
attacking  Lauska  and  Kotitz  as  soon  as  the  battle  was  fairly 
begun.  Thus  even  if  Baden-Durlach  and  the  Austrian  reserve 
from  Reichenberg  should  fail  to  keep  Retzow  and  the  Prussian 
van  occupied,  d’Aremberg  would  interpose  between  that 
division  and  Keith’s.  The  woods  which  covered  the  hills  on 
which  the  Austrians  were  posted  hid  their  preparations  from  the 
Prussians,  and  the  narrow  space  which  separated  the  armies 
was  all  in  favour  of  a  surprise. 

As  the  bells  of  the  village  clock-towers  struck  five  o’clock 
the  Austrian  left  advanced  to  the  attack.  Their  success  was 
immediate.  The  thin  line  of  Prussian  outposts  was  crushed 
in  and  the  Austrians,  falling  on  the  enemy  as  they  gathered 
hastily  from  their  bivouacs,  drove  them  back  into  Hochkirch 
in  disorder,  stormed  a  battery  erected  to  cover  the  village,  and, 
pressing  on,  hurled  themselves  against  the  houses  and  gardens 
among  which  the  Prussians  were  endeavouring  to  rally.  To  a 
certain  extent  the  fog  and  mist  which  had  contributed  to  the 
surprise  of  the  Prussians  now  proved  of  assistance  to  them  by 
helping  to  disorder  the  Austrians  and  to  conceal  from  them 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


245 


1758] 

the  full  extent  of  their  success.  At  any  rate  their  first  rush 
was  stayed,  and  Frederick,  warned  by  the  thunder  of  the 
Austrian  guns  that  this  was  not  the  mere  affair  of  outposts  he 
had  at  first  supposed  it,  hastened  to  bring  up  battalions  from 
the  centre  and  left  to  the  succour  of  his  endangered  right. 
Thus  when  the  Austrians  resumed  the  assault  of  Hochkirch 
they  met  with  a  most  resolute  resistance,  and  for  a  couple  of 
hours  an  even  and  desperate  contest  raged  in  and  around  the 
village.  Keith  perished  in  a  gallant  effort  to  recapture  the 
lost  20  gun  battery,  and  the  Austrians  following  up  his 
repulse  made  themselves  masters  of  the  greater  part  of 
Hochkirch.  Maurice  of  Dessau  brought  forward  his  division 
only  to  be  repulsed  in  his  turn,  and  though  a  charge  by  Ziethen’s 
cavalry  saved  his  battalions  from  destruction,  the  rescuers  were 
in  turn  thrown  back  in  disorder  by  O’Donnell  and  some 
Austrian  cavalry  and  Maurice  himself  went  down  in  a 
desperate  attempt  to  turn  the  fortunes  of  the  day. 

Meanwhile,  on  the  extreme  Austrian  left,  Loudoun’s  Croats 
routed  the  cavalry  who  were  seeking  to  cover  the  right  of 
Maurice’s  infantry  and,  supported  by  a  detached  brigade  of 
the  force  which  had  assailed  Hochkirch,  they  pressed  on 
against  Pomritz,  engaging  the  Prussian  reserves  and  even 
threatening  their  line  of  retreat.  D’Aremberg  also  was 
beginning  to  push  forward  against  Kotitz,  although  a  little 
behind  his  appointed  hour.  Repulsed  at  the  first  attempt,  he 
was  more  successful  on  renewing  it,  carrying  a  battery  of 
30  guns  which  had  checked  his  first  onset,  forcing  the 
defile  of  Kotitz  and  compelling  the  Prussians  to  recoil  towards 
Rodewitz.  By  this  time  (about  9  a.m.)  the  long  struggle  for 
Hochkirch  had  gone  definitely  in  favour  of  the  Austrians,  a 
last  effort  by  the  Prussian  infantry  having  been  worsted  by 
Lacy  charging  at  the  head  of  some  squadrons  of  heavy  cavalry. 
However,  thanks  to  their  artillery,  who  sacrificed  themselves 
to  cover  the  retreat  of  the  rest  of  the  army,  the  Prussians 
were  able  to  fall  back  to  Pomritz,  where  the  right  and  centre 
rallied  on  a  couple  of  battalions  brought  up  from  the  left, 
Btilow  also  checking  Colloredo’s  attacks  on  Ziethen.  The 
rallied  infantry  then  began  their  retreat  through  the  pass  of 
Drehsa,  a  great  battery  collected  by  Frederick  from  all 
quarters  of  the  field  and  established  on  the  Drehsa  heights 
managing  to  hold  Loudoun  at  bay.  In  the  end  the  guns  were 


2 46  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1758 


lost,  a  fate  shared  by  those  near  Rodewitz,  which  had  at  first 
repulsed  d’Aremberg  only  to  be  carried  at  his  second  attempt. 
Had  Baden-Durlach  not  allowed  Retzow  to  slip  away  from 
Weissenberg  and  come  to  the  succour  of  his  King,  it  might 
have  been  all  over  with  the  Prussian  army.  But  Retzow  was 
able  to  make  his  way  to  Drehsa  and  cover  the  retreat  of 
the  main  body  through  the  defile,  the  Austrians  with  an 
unnecessary  prudence  making  hardly  any  effort  to  push  home 
their  success.  They  might  well  have  renewed  the  attack. 
Their  losses  did  not  amount  to  more  than  6000  all  told ;  the 
greater  part  of  Baden-Durlach’s  corps  had  not  fired  a  shot ; 
even  in  the  left  and  centre  18  battalions  out  of  52  had  hardly 
been  engaged,  and  the  captured  guns  might  have  been  turned 
on  their  old  owners.  But  Daun  was  just  the  man  to  be 
content  with  “  having  done  very  well  ”  : 1  satisfied  with  having 
won  a  great  victory,  with  having  punished  Frederick’s  temerity 
and  carelessness,  with  having  captured  his  camp  and  most  of  his 
artillery  and  inflicted  on  him  very  heavy  losses,2  he  let  the 
Prussians  draw  off  unimpeded  to  Doberschutz  where  they 
rallied  in  an  excellent  position  behind  the  Lesser  Spree.  Not 
an  attempt  was  made  to  follow  up  the  great  advantage  which 
had  been  established,  and  thus  Frederick  was  not  only  able 
to  lie  undisturbed  in  his  new  quarters  until  he  had  refitted 
and  encouraged  his  beaten  troops,  supplied  himself  with  fresh 
artillery,  and  called  Prince  Henry  and  8  battalions  from  Dresden 
to  his  assistance  but  in  the  words  of  a  French  envoy  in  the 
Austrian  camp,  he  was  able  “  to  behave  as  if  he  had  forgotten 
the  battle  he  had  lost,’’  to  actually  resume  and  carry  out  his 
original  plan.  Breaking  up  from  Bautzen  on  the  evening  of 
the  24th  he  marched  quite  unobserved  round  Daun’s  position, 
for  Daun  supposed  him  to  be  retiring  on  Glogau,  and  pushing 
on  to  Gorlitz  he  placed  himself  between  Neisse  and  the 
Austrian  main  body. 

Twenty-four  hours  late  Daun  started  in  pursuit  of  his 
daring  adversary  (Oct.  26th  a.m.),  but  a  reconnaissance  of  the 
Prussian  position  quite  deprived  him  of  any  inclination  to 
attack,  and  on  October  29th  he  had  recourse  to  the  doubter’s 
expedient,  a  council  of  war.  It  was  obvious,  he  pointed 

1  Cf.  Mahan’s  Nelson ,  i.  169. 

2  These  probably  amounted  to  9000  all  told,  more  than  half  being  killed,  taken 
or  missing. 


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THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


247 


1758] 

out  to  his  officers,  that  if  the  King  of  Prussia  moved  to  the 
relief  of  Neisse  he  could  not  be  stopped :  it  would  be  un¬ 
reasonable  to  expect  the  Austrians  to  move  with  the  same 
celerity  that  Frederick  always  found  possible,  and  it  would  be 
equally  impossible  for  Harsch  to  hold  his  own  during  the 
three  days  which  must  elapse  before  the  Austrian  main  body 
could  come  to  his  aid.  Daun  therefore  proposed  that  as  soon 
as  Frederick  started  for  Neisse,  Loudoun,  O’Kelly  and  Bela 
with  the  light  troops  should  follow  hard  upon  his  rear,  so  as 
to  give  him  the  impression  the  whole  army  was  after  him, 
whereas  the  Austrian  main  body  should  really  take  the  opposite 
direction,  rejoin  the  Imperial  army  in  Saxony  and  fall  on 
Finck  and  the  small  Prussian  corps  in  that  province,  destroy 
it  and  retake  Dresden.  But  this  plan,  though  put  into  force 
when  Frederick  left  Gorlitz  for  Silesia  (Oct.  30th),  proved  a 
total  failure.  Daun  did  actually  cover  the  distance  from 
Jauernik  and  Dresden  between  November  4th  and  9th,  but 
he  failed  to  cut  off  from  Dresden  the  weak  Prussian  force  in 
Saxony,  1 8  battalions  under  Finck  ;  a  feeble  attack  upon 
the  city  was  checked  by  Schmettau’s  setting  fire  to  the  Pirna 
suburb;  whereupon  Daun,  not  wishing  to  cause  the  destruction 
of  the  capital  of  an  ally  of  Austria,  gave  up  the  attack, 
fell  back  to  Rodewitz  and  there  waited  helplessly  till  Frederick 
came  back  to  Saxony.  Frederick,  though  much  harassed  by 
his  pursuers,  had  relieved  Neisse  (Nov.  7th),  Harsch  sending 
his  guns  safely  over  the  mountains  and  then  following  himself 
when  the  King  drew  near.  Neisse  safe,  Frederick  retraced  his 
steps.  On  the  18th  he  was  back  at  Bautzen;  on  the  20th  he 
regained  Dresden  to  find  Daun  in  full  retreat  on  Bohemia  by 
Pirna,  and  the  Imperial  army  gone  to  Chemnitz  after  an 
unsuccessful  attempt  on  Torgau,  foiled  by  the  arrival  of 
Wedel  and  Dohna  from  Pomerania.  Once  again,  therefore, 
Frederick,  despite  a  great  defeat,  was  able  to  end  the  campaign 
in  no  worse  condition,  save  as  regards  his  resources  in  men 
and  money,  than  he  had  begun  it.  His  generalship  was 
often  faulty :  for  the  defeat  of  Hochkirch  he  had  his  own 
incredible  rashness  to  blame ;  at  Olmiitz  he  let  Daun  and 
Loudoun  out-manoeuvre  him,  and  he  might  have  avoided  the 
carnage  of  Zorndorf,  for  he  might  have  forced  the  Russians 
to  retire  if  he  had  seized  their  baggage  and  supply  trains  at 
Klein  Cammin  on  the  24th.  But  against  these  errors  he  can 


248  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1758 


point  to  the  fine  march  into  Bohemia  after  Olmiitz,  the 
decision  and  energy  of  the  marches  from  Landshut  to  the  Oder, 
from  Zorndorf  to  Saxony,  and  from  Silesia  back  to  Saxony  in 
November ;  above  all,  to  the  resolution  unshaken  by  defeat  and 
to  the  inexhaustible  energy  with  which  he  retrieved  the  losses 
of  Hochkirch.  If  there  was  one  thing  in  which  Frederick 
shone  pre-eminent,  it  was  his  thorough  appreciation  of  the 
cardinal  rule  of  strategy,  that  “  the  advantage  of  time  and 
place  in  all  martial  actions  is  half  a  victory,  which  being  lost 
is  irrecoverable.”  Daun,  on  the  other  hand,  had  failed  to 
utilise  his  chances  and  had  spoilt  all  by  adopting  Fabian 
tactics  when  they  were  least  advisable.  Austria’s  resources, 
when  backed  up  by  those  of  her  allies,  were  much  greater 
than  those  of  Frederick  ;  her  troops  were  improving  rapidly, 
those  of  her  enemy  had  begun  to  deteriorate ;  it  was  to  her 
interest  to  force  the  fighting,  to  pursue  a  policy  of  attrition  ; 
the  waiting  game  was  to  Frederick’s  advantage,  since  it  enabled 
him  to  save  his  soldiers  and  husband  his  resources.  As  for 
the  Russians,  they  had  once  again  neutralised  by  their  utter 
want  of  strategy  their  good  fighting  capacities  and  the 
advantages  of  their  position  on  Frederick’s  left  flank.  They 
had  inflicted  heavy  losses  on  Prussia,  both  in  men  and  in 
resources,  but  they  had  altogether  failed  to  achieve  results 
commensurate  with  their  opportunities. 

It  was  in  no  small  measure  due  to  Frederick’s  ally,  England, 
and  the  army  she  was  maintaining  in  Western  Germany,  that  the 
issue  of  the  campaign  of  1758  had  been  as  satisfactory  as  it  had 
proved.  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick  had  not  failed  to  follow  up 
his  success  in  driving  Clermont  out  of  Germany.  Resuming 
operations  before  his  enemy  had  had  time  to  finish  refitting  his 
troops  or  to  make  good  his  losses,  Ferdinand  crossed  the  Rhine 
at  Emmerich  (June  1st),  boldly  disregarding  the  neutrality  of 
Dutch  territory  which  Holland  was  quite  unable  to  enforce. 
Clermont,  his  left  thus  turned,  fell  back  to  Rheinberg,  but 
finding  a  stand  there  impossible,  retired  to  Meurs  (June  1  3th) 
and  thence  towards  Neuss  (June  16th),  evacuating  the  province 
of  Cleves  and  leaving  the  important  fortress  of  Wesel  quite 
isolated.  Ferdinand  could  only  spare  men  enough  to  blockade 
Wesel,  not  to  attack  it,  but  he  pushed  on  against  Clermont, 
whom  he  found  on  June  23rd  strongly  posted  at  Crefeld  and 
ready  to  give  battle.  Ferdinand  had  only  33,000  men  to 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


249 


1758] 

oppose  to  47,000  ;  but  nevertheless  he  attacked,  demonstrating 
against  Clermont’s  front  and  right  in  order  to  keep  him 
occupied  until  the  real  attack,  a  turning  movement  round  the 
French  left  to  gain  their  rear,  should  have  developed.  With 
numbers  so  inferior  the  stroke  was  most  venturesome,  almost 
rash,  but  it  proved  a  brilliant  success.  After  a  sharp  action, 
in  which  the  French  lost  3  guns  and  had  over  4000  casualties 
as  against  the  1700  of  the  Allies,  Clermont  was  dislodged  from 
his  position  and  fell  back  precipitately  to  Cologne,  which  he 
reached  on  June  28th.  His  retreat  exposed  Dtisseldorf  which 
was  promptly  attacked.  Its  garrison,  mainly  troops  in  the 
service  of  the  Elector  Palatine,  made  but  a  feeble  defence  and 
on  July  7th  the  town  capitulated. 

Indeed  it  seemed  for  a  moment  as  if  even  Cologne  would 
have  to  be  evacuated ;  but  this  was  to  prove  unnecessary. 
Contades  replaced  the  unlucky  Clermont,  considerable  re¬ 
inforcements  were  hastily  sent  to  his  succour,  and  as  a  diversion 
the  auxiliary  corps  under  Soubise  destined  for  Bohemia  was 
called  up  from  Hanau  to  the  Rhine.  Thus,  thanks  to  the 
operations  of  Ferdinand,  no  help  could  be  sent  to  Austria  by 
France  in  this  campaign. 

These  measures  proved  sufficient  to  stop  Ferdinand. 
Soubise  was  successful  in  an  action  at  Sondershausen  near 
Cassel  (July  23rd)  against  Isenburg  and  the  Hessian  corps  on 
which  Ferdinand  was  relying  for  the  protection  of  his  com¬ 
munications.  The  success  was  not  followed  up,  since  Soubise 
spent  the  next  three  weeks  in  inaction  at  Cassel,  but  it  was 
enough  to  alarm  Ferdinand,  and  with  the  enemy  in  his  front 
growing  rapidly  stronger  he  saw  that  it  was  out  of  the 
question  for  him  to  maintain  himself  West  of  the  Rhine. 
Accordingly,  outwitting  and  outmarching  Contades,  he  fell 
back  to  his  bridge  of  boats  at  Rees.  This  had  been  attacked 
for  a  few  days  by  a  column  under  Chevert  despatched  from 
Cologne  for  the  purpose  of  destroying  the  bridge  and  so 
cutting  off  Ferdinand’s  retreat,  but  in  a  sharp  action  at  Meers 
(Aug.  5  th)  Imhoff  and  the  division  acting  as  bridge  guard 
repulsed  Chevert  with  loss.  Even  then  Ferdinand’s  position 
was  none  too  secure,  for  floods  made  the  approaches  to  the 
bridge  impracticable,  and  it  had  to  be  shifted  down  stream  to 
Griethuysen  and  reconstructed  there  to  enable  the  Allies  to 
cross.  However,  this  difficult  operation  was  so  quickly  and 


252  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1759 


final  decision  being  that  the  Russian  army  should  concentrate 
at  Posen  and  move  forward  to  the  Middle  Oder  where  it  was 
to  be  joined  by  the  Austrians,  who  were  to  devote  themselves 
to  keeping  Frederick  occupied  on  the  frontiers  of  Saxony 
and  Silesia  until  such  time  as  the  Russians  were  ready. 

The  result  of  the  adoption  of  this  plan  was  that  the  real 
opening  of  the  campaign  was  very  much  delayed,  and  that  a 
longer  time  than  usual  was  available  for  the  raising  and 
training  of  recruits  and  for  other  preparations.  But  though 
both  main  armies  remained  long  inactive,  raids  and  forays  were 
numerous,  the  Prussians  being  specially  active  and  ubiquitous 
in  gathering  in  supplies  and  in  destroying  those  of  their 
enemies.  Once  they  ventured  as  far  as  Bamberg  in  Franconia 
(May),  and  a  damaging  blow  was  struck  at  the  Army  of  the 
Circles  which  was  forced  to  recoil  with  much  disorder  and  loss 
to  Nuremberg.  Still  for  the  first  time  since  the  beginning  of 
the  war  Frederick  adopted  the  defensive  at  the  outset  of  a 
campaign.  The  days  in  which  he  could  risk  taking  the  offens¬ 
ive  were  past.  His  men  were  no  longer  the  soldiers  of  1756, 
or  he  would  hardly  have  allowed  Daun  to  lie  inactive  and 
undisturbed  in  his  cantonments  in  Northern  Bohemia  while  the 
slow-moving  Russians  were  gradually  concentrating  at  Posen. 

The  drain  of  war  had  made  a  very  great  difference  in  the 
quality  of  the  Prussian  army,  while  the  fighting  capacities  of 
their  enemies  were  rather  improving.  Zorndorf  had  taught 
Frederick  not  to  despise  the  Russians,  and  Hochkirch  would 
hardly  have  been  possible  to  the  Austrian  army  of  the  First  or 
Second  Silesian  Wars.  The  fact  that  Frederick  found  himself 
compelled  to  increase  the  strength  of  his  artillery  until  his  guns 
reached  the  high  proportion  of  4-J  per  1000  men  of  the  field 
army,1  is  an  indication  of  the  changing  situation. 

But  if  it  was  necessary  for  Frederick  to  remain  strictly  on 
the  defensive,  for  Daun  to  adopt  such  a  course  was  hardly 
sound  strategy.  Outnumbering  the  130,000  men  of  whom 
Frederick  could  dispose  by  30,000  Austrians  alone,  even  when 
the  20,000  men  of  the  Army  of  the  Circles  are  omitted  and 
the  25,000  whom  Frederick  had  to  detach  against  the  Russians 
and  Swedes  are  included  in  the  King’s  total,  Daun  had  no 
need  to  wait  for  the  Russians.  With  numbers  so  superior  the 

1  Compare  Napoleon’s  action  in  1813,  when  he  stiffened  his  young  conscripts 
with  an  exceptionally  powerful  artillery. 


1 759] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


253 


true  strategy  for  him  was  to  force  an  action,  to  compel 
Frederick  to  fight  and  use  up  his  resources.  But  after  moving 
up  from  Schurtz  near  Miinchengratz,  where  he  had  lain  so  long 
inactive,  to  Marklissa  on  the  Upper  Oueiss  (June  28th  to  July 
6th),  Daun  once  more  relapsed  into  inaction,  fearing  to  hurl  his 
90,000  men  against  the  strong  position  near  Landshut  where 
Frederick  had  entrenched  the  50,000  who  composed  his  main 
body.  Not  till  the  end  of  July  were  serious  operations  begun, 
and  by  that  time  the  Russians  had  at  last  carried  out  their 
share  of  the  compact. 

It  cannot  be  alleged  that  the  Russians  had  shown  any 
remarkable  alertness  in  their  movements.  About  the  middle 
of  June  they  had  begun  to  concentrate  at  Posen,  but  for  some 
time  their  force  at  that  point  was  so  weak  that  if  Dohna,  to 
whom  Frederick  had  again  entrusted  the  defence  of  his  Eastern 
provinces,  had  known  what  a  chance  lay  before  him  he  might 
have  attacked  Posen  with  a  very  fair  prospect  of  success.  How¬ 
ever,  Dohna  though  reinforced  by  10,000  men  under  Hulsen 
detached  from  Prince  Henry’s  corps,  failed  to  seize  the  oppor¬ 
tunity  and  by  the  end  of  June  the  Russian  army,  over  50,000 
strong,  was  duly  concentrated  at  Posen.  It  was  under  the 
command  of  the  veteran  Soltikov,  who  superseded  Fermor 
without  thereby  bringing  to  the  direction  of  the  Russian  arms 
the  resolution  and  determination  which  had  been  so  conspicu¬ 
ously  lacking  in  the  superseded  commander. 

Soltikov  began  his  march  to  the  Oder  by  quitting  Posen 
on  July  7th  and  advancing  by  Tarnovo  to  Goltzen,  where  on 
July  20th  he  entered  the  province  of  Brandenburg.  His 
opponent  had  sought  to  check  the  Russian  advance  by 
threatening  their  communications  with  the  Vistula,  but,  finding 
his  threat  disregarded,  fell  back  from  Obornik  to  Zullichau. 
There  on  July  22nd  General  Wedel  joined  the  Prussian  army, 
having  been  sent  by  Frederick  to  replace  Dohna  with  whose 
conduct  the  King  was  most  discontented.  Wedel’s  orders 
directed  him  to  arrest  the  march  of  the  enemy  by  bringing 
them  promptly  to  action  ;  but  he  was  not  fortunate  in  the 
manner  in  which  he  carried  them  into  effect,  and  the  battle 
which  he  fought  at  Paltzig  (July  23rd)  resulted  in  a  severe 
defeat  for  the  Prussians.  Out  of  some  30,000  men  they 
lost  over  8000,  a  quarter  of  whom  with  13  guns  were  left 
in  the  hands  of  the  Russians,  whose  casualties  did  not  exceed 


254  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1759 


5000.  Even  more  serious  was  the  demoralised  condition  in 
which  the  defeated  army  was  left.  Several  regiments  had 
behaved  none  too  well  in  the  action  ;  one  battalion  composed  of 
recruits  forcibly  enlisted  by  the  Prussians  in  the  Austrian 
province  of  Upper  Silesia  revenged  itself  by  deserting  in  a 
body  to  the  Russians,1  and,  as  its  conduct  on  a  more  important 
battlefield  a  few  weeks  later  was  to  show  only  too  plainly, 
the  army  of  East  Prussia  was  no  very  solid  bulwark  for  the 
Hohenzollern  dominions.  Quite  unable  to  face  his  enemy 
again  Wedel  put  the  Oder  between  them  and  his  broken 
corps  (July  24th),  and  the  Russians  after  occupying  Crossen 
on  the  25  th  pushed  on  to  Frankfort  and  possessed  themselves 
almost  unopposed  of  that  important  town  with  its  well-supplied 
magazines  (July  31st). 

The  Russians  had  thus  executed  their  share  of  the 
programme,  and  it  was  Daun’s  turn  to  perform  his.  He  did 
not,  indeed,  propose  to  move  his  main  body  to  the  Oder ;  it 
remained  on  the  Queiss  to  hold  Frederick  in  check,  while  some 
1 8,000  men  under  Loudoun  pushed  across  from  Rothenburg 
past  Priebus,  where  Hadik  joined  him  (July  29th),  and 
Sommerfeld  (July  30th)  to  Zilchendorf  on  the  Oder,  where  on 
August  2nd  he  established  communications  with  the  Russians. 
Much  to  Loudoun’s  annoyance,  however,  he  found  it  impossible 
to  induce  Soltikov  to  cross  to  the  left  bank  of  the  Oder,  and 
he  was  in  the  end  forced  to  transfer  himself  and  his  troops  to 
the  right  bank  in  order  to  avoid  being  attacked  and  driven  into 
the  river  by  the  Prussians  who  were  now  approaching. 

Frederick  had  been  prevented  from  intercepting  Loudoun’s 
march  to  the  Oder  by  the  celerity  of  his  movements,  a 
quality  most  unusual  in  the  Austrian  army,  but  he  had  lost 
no  time  in  following  him  to  that  river,  being  well  aware  that 
the  essential  thing  for  him  was  to  defeat  the  Russians.2 
Accordingly  he  called  up  Prince  Henry  to  Schmottseifen  to 
take  command  of  the  troops  destined  to  defend  Silesia  and 
keep  Daun  in  check  (July  29th),  he  himself  with  some  35 
squadrons  and  20  battalions  leaving  Sagan  on  August  1st  and 
pushing  across  to  Miillrose  on  the  Oder  and  Spree  Canal, 
where  on  August  6th  he  effected  a  junction  with  Wedel  and 
his  broken  troops.  It  was  this  move  which  forced  Loudoun  to 

1  Waddington,  iv.  139. 

2  Cf.  letter  of  July  25th  to  Prince  Henry,  Correspondance  Politique ,  xviii.  449. 


1 759] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


255 


put  the  Oder  between  himself  and  the  Prussians,  and  Frederick 
also  had  the  satisfaction  of  forcing  Hadik,  who  was  following 
more  slowly  in  Loudoun’s  track,  to  suspend  his  move  and  to 
fall  back  to  join  Daun  in  order  to  escape  being  cut  off,  a 
fate  which  did  befall  his  rearguard  at  Spermberg  (Aug.  3rd). 
Three  days  after  the  junction  with  Wedel,  Frederick  was 
reinforced  by  a  division  under  Finck  which  he  had  summoned 
up  from  Torgau  and  which  performed  no  inconsiderable  feat  in 
covering  1 60  miles  in  9  days.  The  Prussian  army  was  thus 
brought  up  to  a  strength  of  106  squadrons  and  63  battalions, 
well  supplied  with  artillery.  This  concentration  was  made 
possible  by  exposing  a  dangerously  weak  force  to  Daun,  and 
the  Austrian  commander  was  much  at  fault  in  not  punishing 
his  adversary’s  temerity,  but  Frederick  knew  the  man  he  was 
dealing  with,  and  risked  a  disaster  in  Silesia  with  impunity. 

But  it  was  not  everywhere  that  this  impunity  was  to  attend 
Frederick.  The  enemies  he  had  to  face  were  not  to  be  lightly 
estimated  on  the  battlefield  if  their  strategy  was  such  as  to 
justify  him  in  calculating  on  their  making  mistakes. 
Determined  to  bring  the  Russians  to  battle,  he  proceeded  to 
throw  two  bridges  over  the  Oder  at  Goritz,  1 5  miles  below 
Frankfort  (Aug.  10th  to  1  ith),  and  on  the  12th  he  pushed  up 
to  Bischoffsee,  ready  to  attack  the  formidable  position  which 
the  Austro-Russians  were  fortifying  on  the  heights  of 
Kunersdorf  just  East  of  Frankfort.  This  step  was  exactly 
what  Loudoun  was  hoping  for.  That  energetic  commander 
had  been  urging  Soltikov  to  cross  the  river  and  force  Frederick 
to  fight,  but  he  found  the  Russian  most  unwilling  to  commit 
himself  to  so  venturesome  a  step,  and  it  was  with  the  utmost 
difficulty  that  Loudoun  extracted  from  him  a  conditional 
promise  to  do  so.  Indeed,  the  Austrian  was  not  a  little  afraid 
that  the  sole  result  of  the  Russian  advance  to  the  Oder  would 
be  their  return  to  Posen  as  soon  as  they  came  to  the  end  of 
their  supplies  and  had  collected  all  the  plunder  on  which  they 
could  lay  their  hands.  It  was  therefore  a  great  relief  to  him 
when  Frederick  took  the  decision  out  of  Soltikov’s  hands  by 
crossing  to  the  right  bank  and  preparing  to  attack. 

The  position  which  the  Russians  and  their  allies  had  taken 
up  on  the  heights  which  starting  at  Frankfort  run  North-East¬ 
ward  from  the  Oder,  was  one  of  considerable  strength  in  itself, 
and  had  been  carefully  fortified  by  them.  Against  attacks  from 


256  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1759 


the  West  it  was  protected  by  a  wide  extent  of  swampy  ground, 
the  Elsbusch,  so  that  the  Allies,  whose  line  as  a  whole  faced 
East,  had  no  reason  to  be  nervous  for  their  rear.  The  ridge 
was  crossed  at  right  angles  by  several  narrow  ravines,  thus  being 
divided  into  several  quite  independent  heights,  each  capable  of 
being  separately  defended.  Thus  the  Northernmost  part  of 
the  ridge,  the  Miihlberg,  which  formed  the  left  of  the  Allied 
position,  was  separated  from  the  Kuhberg  by  one  depression, 
the  Kuhberg  in  turn  was  cut  off  from  the  central  part  of  the 
ridge  by  the  Kuhgrund  and  Tiefe  Weg,  and  between  the 
central  mass  and  the  Southern  portion,  the  so-called  Judenberg, 
intervened  the  rather  wider  ravine  now  known  as  Loudoun’s 
Grund.  These  three  main  divisions  roughly  corresponded  to 
the  left,  the  centre,  and  the  right  of  the  Russians’  position, 
Fermor’s  division  of  18  battalions  being  posted  on  the 
Judenberg  with  Loudoun’s  infantry  (14  battalions)  in  support, 
the  divisions  of  Villebois  and  Rumanjev  (33  battalions)  holding 
the  central  mass  and  the  Spitzberg,  a  hill  which  projected  from 
it  so  as  to  form  a  salient  on  which  guns  could  be  most  advan¬ 
tageously  placed,  while  Galitzin  and  the  reserve  (1 4  battalions) 
held  the  Miihlberg  and  Kuhberg,  their  left  being  thrown  back  at 
right  angles  so  as  to  face  North  against  a  flanking  attack.  The 
cavalry  were  for  the  most  part  in  reserve,  though  some  were 
extended  beyond  Fermor’s  right.  At  the  Eastern  end  of  the 
Kuhgrund  was  the  village  of  Kunersdorf,  the  greater  part  of 
which  had  been  burnt  to  make  it  useless  as  cover,  while  from  it 
a  line  of  large  ponds  stretched  Eastward  to  the  forest  which  ran 
parallel  with  the  ridge.  A  deep  ravine,  down  which  the  swampy 
brook  of  the  Huhnerfleiss  flowed  into  the  marsh,  served  as  a  wet 
ditch  to  the  Miihlberg,  and  separated  it  from  the  hills  to  the 
North  which  supplied  the  Prussians  with  good  positions  for 
their  artillery.  Altogether  it  was  a  formidable  position,  as  the 
forest  hindered  the  march  of  an  attacking  army,  and  a  general 
might  well  have  hesitated  before  he  launched  his  troops 
against  it,  even  if  the  proportions  had  been  reversed  and  the 
assailants  had  outnumbered  the  defenders  by  four  to  three. 
As  it  was,  Frederick  was  attacking  some  1  8,000  Austrians  and 
48,000  Russians  with  a  force  which  certainly  did  not  amount 
to  5  0,000.*  Both  sides  were  well  supplied  with  artillery,  but 
here  again  the  Allies  had  the  advantage  with  300  pieces  to 

1  Cf.  Waddington,  iv.  157- 159. 


1759] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


257 


240,  and  as  about  half  Frederick’s  infantry  consisted  of  the 
East  Prussian  troops  who  had  been  beaten  at  Paltzig  and  who 
had  behaved  none  too  well  at  Zorndorf,  he  could  hardly  claim 
a  superiority  in  quality.  However,  confident  as  usual  of 
success,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  attack,  since  to  desist  would  be 
a  confession  of  inferiority. 

From  the  first  things  failed  to  go  right.  Compelled  by  the 
ground  to  attack  from  the  Eastward,  the  Prussians  had  to 
make  a  long  march  before  they  could  get  into  position  ;  and 
as  Frederick  intended  to  deliver  his  attack  with  his  left  wing 
against  the  centre  of  the  Allied  line,  the  troops  had  to  be 
set  in  motion  at  2  a.m.  (Aug.  1 2th).  The  manoeuvre  was 
similar  in  character  to  that  which  had  been  adopted  at  Prague 
and  at  Zorndorf,  and  it  was  to  be  covered  by  the  Prussian 
right,  which  had  to  demonstrate  against  the  Miihlberg  and 
to  make  a  show  of  attacking  that  point  in  order  to  draw  the 
enemy’s  attention.  However,  the  march  through  the  forest 
proved  more  difficult  than  had  been  expected ;  the  passage  of 
the  Hiihnerfleiss  caused  great  delays,  the  artillery  stuck  and 
floundered  among  the  swamps,  and  the  whole  operation  was 
so  much  retarded  that  Frederick  altered  his  plan,  ordered  his 
columns  to  swerve  to  their  right  and  to  direct  their  march 
against  the  Miihlberg,  instead  of  pushing  on  past  the  pools 
which  run  East  from  Kunersdorf  in  order  to  attack  the 
Spitzberg.  This  change  of  plan  caused  more  confusion,  but 
about  mid-day  the  advance-guard  debouched  from  the  woods 
and  prepared  to  attack.  An  hour  or  so  earlier  the  action 
had  been  begun  by  the  Prussian  artillery,  which  was  cannonad¬ 
ing  Galitzin’s  position  from  the  hills  now  known  as  the 
Fincksberg  and  Kleistberg. 

The  first  rush  of  the  Prussian  infantry  was  completely 
successful :  undeterred  by  the  salvoes  of  grape  poured  into  them 
at  short  range,  they  scaled  the  slopes,  closed  with  the  Russian 
infantry  and  after  a  savage  struggle  drove  them  off  the  Miihl- 
berg  into  the  ravine  at  its  foot,  capturing  40  guns  and  many 
prisoners.  But  there  were  no  cavalry  at  hand  to  take 
advantage  of  this  success,  to  charge  the  flying  Russians  as 
they  streamed  across  the  low  ground  between  the  Miihlberg 
and  the  next  part  of  the  ridge,  so  that  they  were  able  to 
rally  and  form  up  across  the  ridge  ready  to  withstand  the 
next  attack.  Moreover,  it  proved  impossible  to  turn  the 

17 


258  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1759 


captured  guns  on  their  late  owners,  and  only  4  pieces  could 
be  got  into  position  on  the  Mtihlberg  which  were  heavy 
enough  to  reach  the  opposite  slope,  where  Soltikov  had 
plenty  of  heavy  guns  and  used  them  with  effect.  Meanwhile 
the  infantry  of  the  Prussian  left  and  the  majority  of  the 
cavalry  were  still  struggling  through  the  forest  on  their  way 
to  Kunersdorf ;  and  though  Finck  and  his  8  battalions 
managed  to  push  across  the  Hiihnerfleiss  and  come  up  on 
the  right  of  the  advance-guard,  a  brigade  of  the  right  wing 
went  astray  and  was  out  of  action  for  over  an  hour. 

About  2  p.m.  the  Prussians  advanced  again,  and  once 
more  with  success.  Though  reinforced  by  Austrian  grenadiers 
whom  Loudoun  brought  up,  the  Russians  were  ousted  from 
the  Kuhberg  and  driven  behind  the  Kuhgrund.  Here  another 
sharp  fight  took  place,  till  .  after  the  missing  brigade  of 
the  Prussian  right  had  arrived  and  after  the  capture  of  the 
cemetery  of  Kunersdorf  had  allowed  the  defenders  of  the  Kuh¬ 
grund  to  be  taken  in  flank,  the  Allies  were  forced  back 
to  their  next  line  of  defence,  the  Tiefe  Weg.  But  by  this 
time  the  gallant  regiments  of  the  Prussian  advance-guard  and 
right  wing  were  almost  exhausted.  They  had  been  marching 
and  fighting  for  thirteen  hours  and  more,  without  food, 
in  exceedingly  hot  weather,  and  their  losses  had  been 
enormous.  They  had  accomplished  wonders,  but  the  Russian 
hold  on  the  ridge  was  hardly  shaken ;  they  replaced  their 
broken  units  with  fresh  battalions  from  their  centre  and  right, 
a  numerous  and  powerful  artillery  posted  on  the  Spitzberg 
swept  the  narrow  space  between  Kunersdorf  and  the  Tiefe 
Weg,  where  alone  the  Prussians  could  hope  to  gain  access  to 
the  plateau.  But  Frederick  would  not  listen  to  those  who 
urged  him  to  be  content  with  the  partial  success  he  had 
achieved  ;  to  have  wrested  half  the  field  of  battle  from  the  enemy 
was  not  enough  for  him,  they  must  be  driven  into  the  Oder. 

By  this  time  his  left,  mainly  composed  of  Wedel’s  troops, 
had  at  last  come  up,  and  while  the  cavalry  pushed  through 
the  intervals  in  the  line  of  ponds  under  a  heavy  fire  from  the 
hostile  artillery  in  order  to  hurl  themselves  against  the 
Spitzberg,  the  infantry  of  this  division  made  their  way  up 
the  steep  and  narrow  slope  from  Kunersdorf.  Their  efforts 
were  not  less  valiant  than  those  of  their  comrades  of  the 
right,  but  they  were  equally  unsuccessful.  Brigade  after 


1 759] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


259 


brigade  was  pushed  up  the  slope  in  close  formations  through 
which  the  hostile  cannon  ploughed  lanes  of  dead  and  wounded  : 
one  and  all  were  unable  to  gain  their  end.  The  cavalry 
suffered  the  same  fate  and,  as  they  were  reeling  in  confusion, 
a  well-timed  counter-charge  by  Loudoun’s  cavalry  completed 
their  overthrow  and  drove  their  shattered  remnants  into  the 
shelter  of  the  woods,  after  which  the  Austrians  falling  on 
the  infantry  thus  exposed  cut  them  to  pieces.  All  hope  of 
victory  was  now  gone,  but  Frederick  attempted  to  exact  from 
the  relics  of  his  right  yet  one  last  charge  of  which  they 
were  quite  incapable.  Then  at  last  the  Allies  took  the 
offensive  and  swept  the  Prussians  back  all  along  the  line, 
back  past  the  Kuhgrund,  back  past  the  Kuhberg,  back  till  they 
made  a  sort  of  rally  on  the  Mtihlberg.  They  even  repulsed 
the  first  assault  of  the  Russians  on  this  refuge ;  but  when 
Soltikov  brought  up  some  of  his  still  intact  right,  the 
Miihlberg,  with  the  guns  and  most  of  the  prisoners  Galitzin 
had  lost  earlier  in  the  day,  passed  again  into  Russian  hand$. 
With  this  the  murderous  struggle  ended  ;  the  Prussian  army, 
scattered  in  headlong  flight  through  the  forest,  was  only  saved 
from  complete  destruction  by  the  failure  of  the  victors  to 
pursue.  All  order  was  lost,  the  bonds  of  discipline  were 
relaxed,  nearly  every  gun  was  left  behind  and  the  whole 
army  was  a  helpless  mob.  Luckily  for  the  fugitives  night 
soon  fell,  the  exhaustion  of  the  Austrian  and  Russian  cavalry 
prevented  a  pursuit,  while  the  Cossacks  who  had  played  but 
little  part  in  the  battle  devoted  themselves  to  plunder.  Had 
they  attended  to  their  proper  task  it  must  have  gone  hard 
with  Prussia ;  indeed  Frederick,  believing  all  was  lost,  prepared 
to  commit  suicide.  He  had  known  defeat  before  but  not 
such  a  disaster.  Even  from  Kolin  his  army  had  got  away 
in  some  semblance  of  order,  but  this  seemed  irreparable. 
Nearly  8000  had  fallen,  5000  prisoners  were  left  in  the  victors’ 
hands,  as  many  more  wounded  filled  the  hospitals  of  Goritz 
and  Ciistrin,  while  at  least  2000  deserters  failed  to  rejoin  the 
Prussian  standards.  The  Russian  losses  were  far  from  slight, 
amounting  in  all  to  some  1  5,000,  while  the  Austrian  casualties 
came  to  over  2000  ;  but  heavy  as  these  were,  the  inactivity  of 
the  victors  was  inexcusable.  Had  Soltikov  realised  how  far 
worse  was  the  condition  of  the  Prussians,  he  would  not  have 
allowed  the  fatigue  of  his  troops  to  prevent  him  from  falling 


260  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1759 


on  their  rallied  relics  as  they  recrossed  the  Oder  by  the  bridge 
of  boats  at  Reitwein  next  day.  But  he  remained  inactive 
and  the  exhausted  Prussians  carried  out  the  passage  un¬ 
impeded.  Not  till  the  1 6th  did  Soltikov  cross  the  river  and 
with  that  he  declared  the  Austrians  must  be  content ;  he  and 
his  army  had  done  their  share,  it  was  now  for  Daun  to  play 
his  part. 

The  respite  afforded  him  by  the  delays  of  the  victors  gave 
Frederick’s  courage  time  to  revive.  Within  a  few  days  all 
thought  of  suicide  was  past  and  he  was  making  every  effort 
to  retrieve  the  disaster.  Hardly  ever  were  his  great  powers 
of  organisation,  his  resolution  and  his  tenacity  more  strikingly 
displayed.  He  fell  back  towards  Berlin,  called  to  his  aid  the 
division  under  Kleist  from  Pomerania,  trusting  to  the  normal 
inefficiency  of  the  Swedes  for  the  safety  of  that  province, 
scraped  together  from  depots  and  fortresses  every  man  and 
every  gun  that  could  possibly  be  spared,  and  before  very  long 
had  again  collected  quite  a  respectable  force.  But  remarkable 
as  his  exertions  were,  it  was  really  to  his  adversaries  that 
he  owed  his  escape.  Had  they  pressed  their  advantage  the 
Prussian  monarchy,  reeling  under  the  shock  it  had  received, 
could  hardly  have  survived.  But  the  ineptitude  of  Daun  and 
Soltikov  passes  comprehension.  A  finer  chance  they  could 
not  have  hoped  for,  a  feebler  use  of  it  Frederick  could  not 
have  desired. 

Under  the  circumstances  it  did  not  perhaps  matter  very 
much  what  Daun  did  as  that  he  should  act  promptly  and 
vigorously.  Had  he  marched  direct  on  Berlin,  had  he  fallen 
on  Prince  Henry  and  the  comparatively  weak  force  opposite 
him  at  Schmottseifen,  had  he  directed  his  blow  against  Fouque 
and  the  still  weaker  force  in  Upper  Silesia,  or  had  he  adopted 
the  really  sound  strategy  of  attacking  Frederick  and  endeavour¬ 
ing  to  repeat  Kunersdorf  at  Fiirstenwalde  whither  the  King 
had  now  retired,  he  could  hardly  have  failed  to  be  successful, 
and  his  superior  numbers  would  have  secured  him  against  a 
reverse.  But  as  usual  his  lack  of  energy  was  fatal.  Even  a 
Kunersdorf  could  not  rouse  him  from  the  caution  and  in¬ 
decision  which  had  become  habitual  with  him.  Though 
Maria  Theresa  saw  clearly  that  Frederick  was  the  trunk  whose 
fall  would  bring  all  the  branches  down  with  it,1  she  could  not 

1  Cf.  Waddington,  iv.  189. 


1 759] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


26l 


induce  Daun  to  realise  that  a  blow  at  the  Prussian  army 
would  do  far  more  to  recover  Silesia  than  all  the  skilful 
manceuvrings  proper  to  the  warfare  of  positions  to  which  he 
clung  so  tenaciously.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  what  Frederick  or 
Ferdinand  of  Brunswick  would  have  done  in  Daun’s  place,  and 
one  can  picture  the  energetic  Loudoun  chafing  as  he  saw  the 
fruits  of  the  victory  he  had  done  so  much  to  win  slipping 
through  the  nerveless  grip  of  his  over-cautious  superior. 

While  Daun  and  Soltikov  were  wasting  time  in  futile 
discussion  the  favourable  moments  slipped  by.  Frederick’s 
forces  were  gradually  regaining  respectable  dimensions,  and 
when  at  last,  after  many  delays,  Daun  moved  to  Spermberg 
(Sept.  9th)  in  order  to  co-operate  with  Soltikov  in  the 
attack  on  Frederick  which  should  have  been  made  three  weeks 
earlier,  he  allowed  himself  to  be  diverted  from  this  object  by 
30,000  men.  Prince  Henry  had  been  lying  at  Schmottseifen 
since  the  end  of  July,  successfully  braving  the  risks  of  being 
attacked  by  Daun  and  his  50,000,  and  had  moved  up  to  Sagan 
(Aug.  28th)  in  the  hope  of  effecting  a  junction  with  his 
brother.  Finding  that  the  Austrian  and  Russian  main  bodies 
were  so  posted  as  to  render  this  all  but  impossible,  he  changed 
his  plan.  Leaving  Sagan  on  September  5th  he  marched  up 
the  Bober  to  Kunzendorf,  destroyed  the  Austrian  magazines 
at  Friedland  and  caused  de  Ville  to  retire  hastily  from  Gorlitz 
to  Bautzen,  thereby  exposing  Bohemia  to  Prince  Henry. 
This  had  the  desired  effect  of  drawing  Daun  off  from  Frederick’s 
neighbourhood.  The  news  of  Prince  Henry’s  move  reached 
Daun  at  Spermberg  just  as  the  tardy  blow  against  Frederick 
seemed  at  last  about  to  be  delivered.  He  was  alarmed  not 
only  for  his  magazines  but  for  the  safety  of  Dresden,  which 
had  capitulated  to  the  Army  of  the  Circles  on  September  4th. 
This  force  had  bestirred  itself  when  at  the  end  of  July  the 
departure  first  of  Prince  Henry’s  corps  for  Sagan  and  then 
of  Finck’s  for  the  Oder  had  left  Saxony  denuded  of  Prussian 
troops,  and  the  Duke  of  Zweibriicken  had  without  much 
difficulty  possessed  himself  of  Leipzig,  Torgau  and  Wittenberg 
before  moving  against  Dresden  in  conjunction  with  an 
Austrian  force  under  Brentano  and  Maguire.  But  these 
successes  had  not  been  longlived.  Frederick  had  been  able, 
thanks  to  Daun’s  inactivity,  to  detach  Wunsch  and  Finck 
to  the  Elbe,  and  these  officers  had  defeated  St.  Andre  and 


262  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1759 


1 0,000  of  the  Imperial  army  and  had  recovered  Torgau  and 
Leipzig.  Daun  therefore,  being  most  anxious  not  to  lose 
Dresden  again,  hastened  after  Henry  when  he  heard  of  the 
latter’s  move  Westwards,  even  though  this  involved  abandoning 
the  proposed  co-operation  with  Soltikov.  On  September  13th 
Daun  joined  de  Ville  at  Bautzen,  Prince  Henry  taking  post 
at  Gorlitz  till  the  23rd,  when  he  set  out  for  the  Elbe,  drawing 
after  him  Daun  in  some  fear  for  Dresden.  By  forced  marches 
the  Austrians  reached  Kesselsdorf  on  the  29th  and  got  into 
touch  with  the  Army  of  the  Circles.  Meanwhile  Henry,  con- 
tent  with  having  drawn  Daun  still  farther  away  from  the 
Russians,  fell  back  towards  Strehla,  at  which  place  he  on 
October  4th  effected  a  junction  with  F'inck,  so  that  he  now  had 
40,000  men  under  his  orders.1  Daun,  whose  75  squadrons 
and  64  battalions  made  him  superior  to  his  adversary  by  10,000 
men,  endeavoured  to  bring  him  to  battle ;  but  Henry  had  little 
difficulty  in  avoiding  the  snares  laid  for  him,  and  even  inflicted 
a  sharp  check  on  a  division  under  d’Aremberg  which  was 
seeking  to  cut  his  communications  (Oct.  29th).  However, 
Daun  was  pressing  somewhat  closely  on  Prince  Henry  when 
the  news  that  Frederick,  now  free  from  all  fear  of  the  Russians, 
was  on  his  way  to  the  Elbe  caused  the  Austrian  to  recoil 
to  Wilsdruf  (Nov.  14th)  where  he  took  post  in  the  hope 
of  being  able  to  cover  Dresden. 

Frederick  had  been  set  free  to  devote  his  attention  to 
Saxony  by  the  departure  of  Soltikov  for  the  Vistula.  When 
Daun  had  turned  back  from  Spermberg  to  follow  Henry  to 
Bautzen  the  Russians,  now  reinforced  by  some  10,000  more 
Austrians,  moved  into  Silesia  to  form  the  siege  of  Glogau. 
But  Frederick,  though  his  available  force  only  mustered 
24,000,  mostly  survivors  of  Paltzig  and  Kunersdorf,  hastened 
to  its  succour,  outmarched  Soltikov,  and  barred  his  path  at 
Neustadtl  (Sept.  24th).  The  Russian  refused  to  attack, 
fell  back  across  the  Oder  (Sept.  30th)  and  announced 
his  intention  of  withdrawing  to  his  winter-quarters  with  the 
middle  of  October,  a  measure  he  actually  carried  out  at  the 
end  of  the  month.  Loudoun’s  Austrians,  thus  cut  off  from 
their  friends,  had  to  regain  Moravia  by  a  long  and  painful 
detour  by  Czenstochov  and  Cracow.  Thus  by  the  middle 
of  November  the  situation  had  undergone  a  complete  change, 

1  103  squadrons  and  53  battalions. 


1 7  59] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


263 


and  Frederick,  passing  from  deepest  depression  to  the  opposite 
extreme,  was  contemplating  taking  the  offensive  against  Daun 
just  though  Kunersdorf  had  never  been  fought  and  lost. 
Much  encouraged  by  the  remissness  of  his  enemies,  which  had 
allowed  him  time  to  rally  and  retrieve  his  position,  he  had 
returned  to  his  old  faults  of  over- confidence  in  himself  and 
undervaluing  his  enemy.  Before  the  end  of  October  he  had 
detached  some  30  squadrons  and  18  battalions  to  reinforce 
Prince  Henry,  and  on  November  14th  he  himself  took  com¬ 
mand  of  the  Prussian  forces  in  Saxony  and  at  once  embarked 
on  an  elaborate  movement  by  which  he  expected  to  drive 
Daun  out  of  the  Electorate. 

The  measure  by  which  he  proposed  to  effect  this  was  not  a 
frontal  attack  on  the  strong  position  at  Plauen  to  which  Daun 
had  now  recoiled,  but  a  turning  movement  round  the  left 
flank  of  the  Austrian  position  directed  against  their  communica¬ 
tions  with  Bohemia.  This  task  Frederick  entrusted  to  one 
of  his  most  capable  lieutenants,  Finck,  to  whom  he  gave  some 
35  squadrons  of  cavalry  and  18  battalions  of  infantry,  in  all 
about  14,000  men.  Finck’s  instructions  were  to  move  from 
Nossen  by  Dippoldiswalde  to  Maxen,  where  he  would  be  on 
Daun’s  line  of  communications  with  Bohemia  and  could  thrust 
out  flying  columns  against  the  Austrian  magazines.  But  this 
position  in  rear  of  the  Austrian  camp  was  one  of  peril,  and  it 
was  essential  that  Finck  should  be  supported  by  an  advance  of 
the  Prussian  main  body  against  Daun’s  front.  This  was  not 
forthcoming,  for  Frederick  would  seem  to  have  expected  that 
the  mere  appearance  of  Finck  in  Daun’s  rear  would  be  enough 
to  send  the  Austrian  army  back  in  confusion  to  Bohemia. 
He  was  to  be  grievously  disappointed.  Daun  had  already 
detached  Brentano’s  division  to  oppose  Finck  and  he  now 
moved  on  Dippoldiswalde  with  that  of  Sincere,  over  19,000 
strong  (Nov.  19),  and  occupying  that  point  placed  himself 
across  the  line  by  which  Finck  had  advanced  and  by  which 
he  would  have  to  retreat  if  checked  by  the  forces  ahead  of  him. 
These  included  Brentano’s  division  to  the  Northward,  a 
brigade  under  Palffy  across  his  line  of  advance  Eastward  at 
Dohna,  and  7000  men  of  the  Army  of  the  Circles  to  the 
South-East.  Trapped  between  these  vastly  superior  forces, 
Finck’s  position  was  hopeless.  Early  on  November  20th  the 
triple  attack  began,  from  North,  from  East,  and  from  South- 


264  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1759 


West.  It  was  from  this  last  quarter  that  the  principal  attack 
came,  and  before  the  advance  of  Sincere’s  troops,  directed  by 
Daun  himself,  the  Prussians  soon  had  to  give  way,  they 
were  driven  in  disorder  from  the  heights  near  Maxen  to 
Schmorsdorf.  Here  they  rallied,  but  Daun  and  Brentano  got 
into  touch  and  pushing  on  expelled  the  Prussians  from  their 
refuge.  Flying  headlong  to  Bloschwitz  they  found  their  way 
barred  by  the  Imperial  Army  and  by  Palffy’s  brigade.  An 
attempt  of  the  cavalry  to  escape  under  cover  of  night  proved 
unsuccessful,  and  with  the  morning  surrender  came.  The 
entire  force  had  to  lay  down  its  arms  as  prisoners  of  war,  a 
success  purchased  by  the  Austrians  at  the  cost  of  some  1000 
casualties.  Finck  must  not  be  blamed  for  the  disaster,  he  had 
done  all  he  could,  and  the  responsibility  must  rest  with 
Frederick,  who  despatched  so  weak  a  force  on  so  difficult  an 
errand  and  then  failed  to  give  his  unfortunate  lieutenant  timely 
or  adequate  support. 

It  might  have  been  expected  that  a  blow  like  that  of 
Maxen  would  have  been  turned  to  good  use  by  the  victorious 
general,  but  Daun  once  again  failed  to  profit  by  his  success  or 
to  act  against  Frederick  with  the  same  energy  and  promptitude 
with  which  he  had  utilised  Finck’s  isolation.  He  did  fall  on 
another  Prussian  detachment,  Diericke’s  at  Meissen,  and  drove 
it  over  the  Elbe  with  a  loss  of  1500  men  and  8  guns  (Dec. 
3rd),  but  he  made  no  move  against  Frederick,  who  was  reduced 
to  making  a  despairing  appeal  to  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick  for 
the  help  he  could  expect  from  no  other  source.  But  though 
Ferdinand  promptly  sent  off  12,000  men,  who  arrived  at 
Freyberg  on  December  28th,  they  could  not  have  reached 
Frederick  in  time  if  Daun  had  been  prepared  to  risk  anything. 
No  doubt  the  weather  made  operations  difficult  and  a  failure 
might  have  involved  the  loss  of  Dresden  ;  but,  important  as  was 
the  safe  retention  of  that  city  by  the  Allies,  it  was  but  a  sorry 
result  for  a  campaign  which  had  seen  Frederick  brought  to  the 
brink  of  ruin  at  Kunersdorf.  The  three  critical  weeks  of 
August  which  Soltikov  and  Daun  had  so  failed  to  use  must 
be  reckoned  as  one  of  the  greatest  dangers  the  Prussian 
monarchy  has  ever  encountered  ;  and,  seeing  how  near  he  had 
been  to  total  disaster,  Frederick  had  more  cause  to  congratulate 
himself  on  the  outcome  of  the  campaign  than  the  Allies  had. 
Still,  when  in  January  the  enemies  retired  into  their  winter- 


1 759] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


265 


quarters  the  outlook  for  the  Prussian  King  was  unpromising. 
He  had  for  the  first  time  in  the  war  lost  territory,  and  despite 
the  marvellous  way  in  which  he  had  recovered  from  the 
staggering  blow  of  Kunersdorf  his  military  reputation  had 
not  been  enhanced  by  the  events  of  the  year.  For  Maxen, 
as  has  been  said,  the  responsibility  was  mainly  his,  and  at 
Kunersdorf  he  had  attempted  a  task  beyond  the  capacities  of 
his  army  and  had  sacrificed  the  solid  if  partial  advantage  of 
the  capture  of  the  Miihlberg  in  the  desperate  endeavour  to 
carry  the  whole  position. 

Once  again  he  had  good  reason  to  congratulate  himself  on 
the  skill  and  success  with  which  his  right  flank  had  been  pro¬ 
tected  during  this  critical  year.  Once  again  the  French  had 
been  prevented  from  lending  a  helping  hand  to  their  ally 
by  the  interposition  of  the  Anglo-German  army  of  Western 
Germany  so  efficiently  commanded  by  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick. 
Though  always  opposed  by  greatly  superior  forces,  Ferdinand 
handled  his  troops  so  skilfully  and  judiciously  that  he  was 
able  to  hold  his  own  and  the  campaign  saw  him  successful  in 
the  principal  battle  of  his  career. 

Much  to  the  annoyance  of  the  French,  who  had  no 
intention  of  beginning  their  operations  till  June,  Ferdinand 
was  in  the  field  before  March  was  out.  Collecting  some  30,000 
men  at  Cassel  he  opened  the  campaign  by  falling  on  the 
cantonments  of  the  Army  of  the  Circles  in  Franconia, 
inflicting  considerable  losses  upon  it  and  practically  putting  it 
out  of  action  for  some  months.  Then  returning  to  Fulda 
(April  7th),  he  made  a  rapid  march  Southward,  hoping  to 
recover  Frankfort-on-Main  of  which  Soubise  had  possessed 
himself  somewhat  treacherously  soon  after  the  New  Year. 
But  he  did  not  succeed  in  catching  Soubise’s  successor,  de 
Broglie,  napping  and  on  April  1  3th  he  found  his  way  barred 
by  a  slightly  superior  force  at  Bergen,  a  few  miles  north 
of  Frankfort.  A  sharply  contested  action  followed,  turning 
mainly  on  the  village  of  Bergen,  which  formed  the  key  to  the 
French  position  and  was  bravely  held  by  8  battalions  of 
Swiss  and  Germans  in  the  French  service,  while  on  the  French 
left  was  posted  the  Saxon  contingent  attached  to  de  Broglie’s 
army.  Repeated  attacks  somewhat  insufficiently  supported 
by  Ferdinand’s  artillery  failed  to  wrest  Bergen  from  the 
possession  of  the  French,  and  after  these  had  been  repulsed  the 


266  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1759 


action  developed  into  a  cannonade  which  lasted  till  nightfall. 
Ferdinand’s  stroke  had  failed,  he  had  lost  between  2000  and 
3000  men  with  5  guns,  and  there  was  nothing  for  him  but  a 
retreat  into  Hesse.  By  April  23rd  he  had  established  himself 
at  Ziegenhayn  near  Cassel,  the  French  having  made  hardly 
any  effort  to  pursue.  At  Ziegenhayn  he  remained  till  May 
15th,  when  he  moved  to  Lippstadt,  leaving  a  division  under 
Imhoff  to  cover  Hesse. 

Ferdinand  had  moved  to  Lippstadt  because  he  expected 
the  attack  of  Contades  and  the  Army  of  the  Rhine  to  be 
delivered  against  either  that  fortress  or  Munster ;  but  in  this 
he  was  mistaken.  When  Contades  took  the  field  it  was  on 
Giessen  that  he  moved  from  Diisseldorf,  and  near  Giessen 
that  he  was  joined  by  the  available  portions  of  the  Army  of 
the  Main  (June  1st).  With  100  battalions  and  80  squadrons 
at  his  disposal,  Contades  advanced  northwards  into  Hesse- 
Cassel ;  on  June  10th  de  Broglie  occupied  the  town  of  Cassel. 
Too  weak  to  risk  a  battle  to  save  Flesse,  Ferdinand  had  to 
call  Imhoff  to  him  and  take  post  at  Biiren,  leaving  Wangenheim 
and  a  Hanoverian  division  to  protect  Westphalia,  which  was 
menaced  by  the  20,000  Frenchmen  left  on  the  Lower  Rhine 
under  d’Armentieres.  Ferdinand  had  by  this  time  been 
joined  by  Lord  George  Sackville  and  the  British  contingent 
who  had  not  taken  part  in  the  dash  against  Frankfort. 
However,  the  position  proved  untenable  and  Ferdinand  fell 
back  to  Lippstadt,  while  on  June  29th  Contades  resumed  his 
advance  and  once  more  Ferdinand  had  to  retreat  as  the  French 
general  kept  on  pushing  his  right  wing  on  ahead  so  as  to  turn 
Ferdinand’s  left.  Unable  to  get  a  chance  of  dealing  a  blow 
at  the  outflanking  wing,  for  Contades  and  the  main  body 
were  never  out  of  supporting  distance,  Ferdinand  had  to  keep 
on  retreating. 

One  of  the  principal  objects  of  the  French  movement  was 
to  isolate  Ferdinand  from  the  Prussians,  and  it  was  for  this 
reason  that  it  was  his  left  which  was  always  turned.  On 
July  9th,  by  the  surprise  of  Minden,  Contades  secured  a  passage 
over  the  Weser,  a  success  of  great  importance,  for  it  placed 
it  in  his  power  to  secure  possession  of  other  passages  lower 
down  the  river,  and  by  thus  preventing  Ferdinand  from 
crossing  to  the  right  bank,  to  cut  him  off  from  all  chance  of 
communicating  with  Frederick.  The  only  means  of  avoiding 


1 7  59] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


267 


this  open  to  Ferdinand,  who  at  that  moment  was  at  Osnabriick, 
was  to  retire  down  the  Weser  and  so  secure  the  passages. 
This,  however,  involved  risking  the  all-important  fortress  of 
Munster  on  which  largely  depended  Ferdinand’s  communications 
with  England  through  Embden.  It  had  just  been  left  exposed 
to  d’Armentieres  and  the  Army  of  the  Lower  Rhine  by  the 
calling  up  of  Wangenheim’s  division  to  the  main  army,  which 
even  when  thus  reinforced  was  inferior  to  that  of  Contades. 
However,  there  was  no  help  for  it,  and  Ferdinand  fell  back  to 
Stolzenau  on  the  Lower  Weser,  where  he  took  post  (July 
14th).  Meanwhile  Contades  had  halted  at  Minden  waiting  till 
d’Armentieres,  who  had  formed  the  siege  of  Munster,  should 
have  also  reduced  Lippstadt.  Only  by  forcing  on  a  battle 
could  Ferdinand  hope  to  save  the  fortresses,  and  with  this 
object  in  view  he  detached  a  small  force  of  men  under  the 
Hereditary  Prince  of  Brunswick  to  seize  Gohfeld,  and  so 
threaten  the  French  communications  with  Cassel  (July  31st). 

Plowever,  Contades  did  not  now  need  to  be  forced  to 
fight.  Much  encouraged  by  the  news  that  Munster  had 
fallen  (July  25  th),  and  that  d’Armentieres  was  about  to  attack 
Lippstadt,  he  had  resolved  to  profit  by  the  apparent  dispersion 
of  his  enemies  ;  for  while  the  division  at  Gohfeld  seemed  too 
far  away  to  take  part  in  any  action,  another  portion  of 
Ferdinand’s  army  had  been  pushed  forward  to  Todtenhausen 
so  as  to  protect  convoys  coming  up  from  the  Lower  Weser, 
and  seemed  dangerously  exposed.  Accordingly  he  resolved 
to  quit  the  strong  position  behind  the  Bastau  brook,  in  which 
he  might  have  awaited  an  attack  with  the  greatest  confidence, 
to  advance  against  Ferdinand  and  drive  him  off.  Very  early 
on  the  morning  of  August  1st,  therefore,  he  put  his  troops  in 
motion,  crossing  the  Bastau  and  deploying  in  front  of  Minden. 

The  ground  on  which  the  battle  was  to  be  fought  was  a 
more  or  less  triangular  piece  of  open  country,  very  suitable 
for  the  movements  of  cavalry.  On  the  East  ran  the  Weser,  on 
which  the  French  right  under  de  Broglie  was  to  rest,  to  the 
South-West  the  Minden  Marsh  covered  the  French  left,  while 
to  the  North-West  an  affluent  of  the  Bastau  and  the  forest  of 
Heisterholz  served  to  cover  the  movements  of  Ferdinand. 
That  general’s  force  was  divided  into  two ;  he  himself  with 
31  battalions  and  42  squadrons,  which  in  the  battle  formed 
his  right  and  centre,  lay  between  the  villages  of  Hille  and 


268  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1759 


Fredewald,  Wangenheim  with  the  19  squadrons  and  15  bat¬ 
talions  of  the  left  wing  holding  the  villages  of  Todtenhausen 
and  Kutenhausen  on  the  edge  of  the  forest  and  somewhat  in 
advance  of  the  rest  Contades’  scheme  was  that  his  right,  de 
Broglie’s  corps  supported  by  the  infantry  divisions  of  Nicolai  and 
St.  Germain,  should  advance  against  Todtenhausen  and  capture 
it :  under  cover  of  this  the  rest  of  the  army  should  deploy  on 
a  semicircular  front,  its  left,  composed  of  infantry,  resting  on 
the  marsh,  more  infantry  on  the  right  keeping  touch  with 
de  Broglie’s  corps,  while  the  bulk  of  the  cavalry,  drawn  up  in 
three  lines,  formed  the  centre.  Had  these  movements  been 
carried  out  promptly  they  might  well  have  proved  successful, 
but  de  Broglie  hesitated,  not  wishing  to  attack  till  Nicolai’s 
arrival  should  secure  his  flank,  and  the  delay  was  turned  to 
good  account  by  Ferdinand.  He  hastened  the  deploying  of 
his'  troops  to  such  purpose  that  by  8  a.m.  it  had  been 
completed  without  any  intervention  on  the  part  of  the  French, 
while  on  his  extreme  right  he  was  able  to  secure  the  village 
of  Hahlen  and  so  establish  in  an  excellent  position  several 
batteries  of  artillery  who  played  with  much  effect  on  the 
French.  Moreover,  by  the  time  that  de  Broglie  began  to  press 
his  attack  on  Todtenhausen,  touch  had  been  established  between 
Wangenheim  and  the  left  of  the  main  body. 

The  artillery  of  both  sides  had  been  busily  employed  for 
some  time,  when  suddenly  to  the  general  surprise  the  6 
British  and  3  Hanoverian  battalions  which  formed  the 
right  of  Ferdinand’s  infantry  began  to  advance  straight  to 
their  front  against  the  cavalry  who  formed  the  French  centre. 
The  reason  for  this  unexpected  move  was  that  an  order  of 
Ferdinand’s  that  the  advance,  when  made,  should  be  with 
drums  beating,  was  misinterpreted  as  a  direction  to  the 
division  to  advance  immediately  “  on  sound  of  drum.”  It 
certainly  took  the  French  completely  by  surprise,  and  had  the 
most  astonishing  results.  The  French  cavalry  promptly 
charged,  but  were  thrown  back  in  disorder :  the  second  line 
fared  little  better,  it  shook  the  infantry  for  a  moment  but  was 
itself  routed.  In  vain  the  French  batteries  poured  in  a  heavy 
fire :  they  could  not  stop  “  that  astonishing  infantry.”  In  vain 
the  third  line  of  French  cavalry  hurled  itself  upon  them. 
Though  it  broke  through  some  of  the  battalions  in  the  front 
line,  it  failed  to  shake  the  second,  which  Ferdinand,  quick  to 


1 759] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


269 


utilise  the  advantage  accident  had  given  him,  had  promptly 
reinforced  with  6  battalions.  As  the  third  line  of  squadrons 
reeled  back  a  splendid  opportunity  was  presented  to  the  Allied 
cavalry  of  turningthe  French  defeatinto  an  overwhelming  disaster. 
But  in  an  evil  hour  for  his  reputation,  Lord  George  Sackville, 
who  commanded  the  24  squadrons,  15  of  them  British,  of 
the  Allied  right,  failed  to  obey  the  repeated  orders  of  his 
commander-in-chief:  it  is  only  too  probable  that  his  disobedi¬ 
ence  was  deliberate,  and  that  he  sacrificed  the  public  service  to 
his  own  personal  spite  against  Ferdinand. 

Still  even  without  Sackville’s  cavalry  the  plight  of  the 
French  was  pitiable.  Their  centre  was  completely  broken, 
the  efforts  of  Beaupreau’s  infantry  to  succour  the  cavalry  by 
storming  Maulbergen  had  failed,  and  the  division  was  cut  to 
pieces  by  some  Hessian  squadrons.  Before  the  advance  of 
Imhoff  and  the  Prince  of  Holstein’s  cavalry,  Nicolai  had  to  give 
way :  his  guns  were  taken.  On  the  French  left  the  infantry, 
more  than  half  of  whom  were  Saxons,  recoiled  in  disorder 
when  attacked  by  the  English  infantry  and  by  the  Hanoverians 
of  Scheele  and  Wutgenau.  The  Anglo-German  artillery, 
admirably  served,  wrought  havoc  among  the  flying  masses,  and 
had  not  de  Broglie’s  intact  corps  intervened  to  cover  the 
retreat  a  complete  disaster  could  hardly  have  been  avoided. 
As  it  was,  Sackville’s  inaction  and  the  steadiness  of  de  Broglie’s 
wing  allowed  the  French  to  recross  the  Bastau  and  the  Allies, 
content  with  their  success,  halted  outside  the  fortifications  of 
Minden. 

Indeed  they  had  achieved  a  remarkable  success.  Though 
inferior  by  at  least  12,000  to  the  81  squadrons  and  80 
battalions  of  Contades,  the  Anglo-German  army  had  at  a 
cost  of  less  than  3000  inflicted  on  their  enemies  one  of  8000 
at  the  lowest  estimate,  while  10,000  would  probably  be  nearer 
the  mark.  Of  their  own  casualties,  one-half  occurred  among 
the  6  British  battalions  who  had  played  so  conspicuous  and 
important  a  part  in  the  action,  the  3  Hanoverian  battalions 
who  had  shared  in  the  charge  getting  off  more  lightly  with 
300.  Forty- three  guns  were  among  the  prizes  of  victory,  and 
as  the  division  at  Gohfeld  had  simultaneously  fallen  on  the 
French  at  Hervorden,  beaten  them  and  cut  their  communica¬ 
tions  with  Paderborn,  Contades  had  to  recoil  promptly  up 
the  Weser  upon  Cassel. 


270  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1759 


Ferdinand  certainly  owed  his  victory  mainly  to  the  9 
battalions  whose  advance  almost  unsupported  against  the 
French  cavalry  was  certainly  the  most  brilliant  and  remarkable 
feat  accomplished  by  any  infantry  in  the  war.  The  high 
proportion  of  their  losses  shows  how  large  a  share  of  the 
fighting  fell  on  them.  But  Ferdinand’s  own  contribution  to 
the  success  of  the  day  was  not  inconsiderable.  The  clever 
manoeuvres  by  which  he  induced  Contades  to  leave  his  formid¬ 
able  position  and  give  battle  on  ground  which  was  far  more 
favourable  to  his  adversaries,  was  only  less  meritorious  than 
the  promptitude  with  which  he  seized  the  unexpected  chance 
given  him  by  the  advance  of  the  9  battalions.  Instead  of 
being  disconcerted  by  so  surprising  a  turn  of  events,  Ferdinand 
at  once  supported  the  advancing  infantry  with  great  skill, 
handling  his  artillery  so  as  to  materially  assist  the  advance, 
and  sending  up  fresh  battalions  to  their  help.  Had  Sackville 
only  done  his  duty,  Minden  would  probably  have  been  a  more 
complete  rout  than  Rossbach. 

Ferdinand  cannot,  however,  escape  criticism  for  his  conduct 
immediately  after  the  battle.  A  prompt  pursuit  could  hardly 
have  failed  to  be  successful,  and  it  ought  to  have  been  possible 
to  anticipate  the  French  at  Cassel,  for  the  line  by  which  they 
retired  was  not  of  the  most  direct,  and  their  march,  hampered 
by  a  great  quantity  of  baggage,  was  very  slow,  ten  days  being 
spent  in  covering  1 10  miles.  But  Ferdinand  hardly  attempted 
to  pursue,  and  on  the  1  2th,  when  the  French  main  body  crawled 
into  Cassel  after  a  tedious  and  painful  march  through  a  difficult 
and  unfriendly  country,  during  which  a  good  many  of  the 
Saxons  took  the  opportunity  to  desert,  his  headquarters 
had  not  got  beyond  Stadtberg.  At  Cassel,  Contades  regained 
touch  with  d’Armentieres,  who  had  raised  the  siege  of  Lippstadt. 
However,  his  stay  at  Cassel  was  not  to  be  long.  Extremely 
afraid  of  being  cut  off  from  the  Rhine,  he  fell  back  to  Marburg 
directly  the  appearance  of  part  of  Ferdinand’s  army  at  Corbach 
(Aug.  1 8th)  seemed  to  indicate  a  turning  movement  against 
the  French  left.  Nor  did  Marburg  afford  more  than  a 
temporary  resting-place.  On  September  4th  it  also  was 
evacuated  and  a  retreat  made  to  Giessen,  where  a  halt  was 
called  behind  the  Lahn.  Ferdinand,  whose  move  on  Wetzlar 
had  caused  this  retreat,  followed  to  the  Lahn,  and  took  post 
on  the  north  bank,  having  first  taken  Marburg  (Sept. 


1 759] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  II 


271 


I  ith).  He  made  no  attempt  to  force  the  French  position,  for 
his  army  had  been  considerably  reduced  by  the  detachments 
he  had  had  to  make,  notably  for  the  siege  of  Munster.  This 
was  a  slow  affair ;  but  when  the  Prince  of  Lippe  Biickeburg  1 
replaced  General  Imhoff  in  command  of  the  besiegers  (Nov.) 
matters  progressed  more  rapidly  till,  on  November  21st, 
the  garrison  found  themselves  forced  to  capitulate.  How¬ 
ever,  it  was  then  too  late  for  Ferdinand  to  undertake  any 
serious  operations,  especially  as  in  response  to  Frederick’s 
urgent  appeals  he  had  detached  (Dec.  9th)  a  strong 
division  to  Saxony  to  the  succour  of  the  hard-pressed  King  of 
Prussia.  Indeed  the  chief  breach  in  the  inaction  of  the  two 
armies  which  faced  each  other  across  the  Lahn  from  September 
to  the  beginning  of  December  came  from  the  French.  In 
November  the  command  of  the  army  was  transferred  from 
Contades  to  de  Broglie,  and  the  new  commander,  having  at  his 
disposal  a  corps  of  some  10,000  Wiirtembergers  whose  Duke 
had  just  concluded  a  new  convention  with  France,  employed 
this  reinforcement  to  threaten  Ferdinand’s  left  flank  by 
pushing  them  forward  to  Fulda  (Nov.  20th).  But  this 
exposed  them  to  a  counter-stroke,  and  on  November  30th 
the  Hereditary  Prince  of  Brunswick  surprised  the  Wtirtem- 
bergers,  who  had  scattered  to  pillage,  inflicted  on  them  over 
1500  casualties  and  drove  them  back  in  great  disorder.  This 
reverse,  combined  with  the  news  of  the  fall  of  Munster,  induced 
de  Broglie  to  withdraw  from  Giessen  to  Friedberg  (Dec. 
5  th),  though  on  the  retreat  of  Ferdinand  to  his  winter-quarters 
the  French  reoccupied  their  old  cantonments  on  the  Lahn 
(Jan.  1760),  the  Saxons  and  Wiirtembergers  being  between 
Hanau  and  Wurzburg,  and  the  Army  of  the  Lower  Rhine, 
now  under  de  Muy,  to  the  West  of  that  river.  Ferdinand’s 
men  were  distributed  between  Westphalia  and  Hesse,  some 
being  posted  from  the  Lahn  to  the  Werra  so  as  to  cover 
Hesse  from  the  South,  the  rest  extending  from  Munster  to 
the  Upper  Weser.  Thus  closed  a  campaign  in  which,  despite 
their  superior  numbers,  the  French  had  completely  failed  to 
maintain  the  ground  they  had  gained  in  the  opening  stages : 
P'erdinand’s  tenacity,  resolution  and  skilful  manoeuvring  and 
the  excellent  fighting  qualities  of  his  English  and  Hanoverians 
had  brought  him  safely  out  of  a  very  awkward  situation,  and 

1  Cf.  p.  372. 


272  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1759 


he  could  congratulate  himself  on  having  driven  the  invaders 
out  of  the  territories  it  was  his  task  to  guard,  and  inflicted  on 
the  French  the  severest  defeat  their  principal  army  suffered 
during  the  war.  Moreover,  he  had  been  able  to  detach  to  the 
aid  of  the  King  of  Prussia  a  really  considerable  reinforcement. 
It  is  easy  to  picture  the  plight  in  which  Frederick  would  have 
found  himself  had  Minden  been  a  French  victory.  He  could 
hardly  have  survived  Kunersdorf. 

The  months  of  inaction  which  followed  the  long-drawn-out 
campaign  of  1759  were  as  usual  spent  by  Austria  and  her 
allies  in  recriminations  over  the  disasters  of  the  past  year,  and 
in  planning  schemes  for  accomplishing  in  the  coming  campaign 
all  that  had  not  been  achieved  in  the  last  France,  not 
without  reason,  was  much  discouraged,  and  would  have  been 
glad  to  come  to  terms  with  England,  for  Minden  was  not  the 
only  blow  which  the  Bourbon  monarchy  had  suffered  at  the 
hands  of  King  George.  Lagos,  Quebec  and  Quiberon  were 
quite  enough  for  one  year,  and  the  only  ray  of  hope  in  the 
situation  was  the  accession  of  the  inveterate  enemy  of  England, 
Don  Carlos  of  the  Two  Sicilies,  to  the  Spanish  throne  left 
vacant  by  the  death  (Aug.  1759)  of  Ferdinand  VI.  But  in 
the  end,  after  much  correspondence  and  negotiating,  France 
remained  true  to  her  alliances,  and  the  only  important  change 
was  a  modification  of  the  Austro-Russian  treaty  by  which  it 
was  agreed  that  East  Prussia  was  to  fall  to  the  share  of  Russia 
and  not  to  be  given  to  Poland. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  W A R — concluded 

FvOR  the  campaign  of  1760  two  alternative  schemes  were 
proposed.  Daun  was  in  favour  of  that  of  Lacy,  which 
contemplated  a  defensive  attitude  until  the  Russians  should 
arrive  ;  Loudoun,  on  the  contrary,  pleaded  for  a  vigorous  offens¬ 
ive  which  would  not  give  Frederick  time  to  recover  the  heavy 
losses  of  the  previous  year,  a  proposal  with  which  Kaunitz  on 
the  whole  concurred.  Finally,  though  Soltikov  induced  the 
Czarina  to  refuse  the  request  that  an  auxiliary  Russian  corps 
should  be  detached  to  join  Loudoun,  it  was  decided  to  adopt 
a  modification  of  the  latter’s  scheme.  While  the  main 
Austrian  army  in  Saxony  was  to  watch  Frederick,  Loudoun 
was  to  assemble  a  second  army,  40,000  strong,  in  Bohemia 
and  attempt  Silesia,  the  Russians  co-operating  by  crossing  the 
Oder  at  Frankfurt  and  besieging  Breslau. 

At  the  end  of  May,  Loudoun  moved  forward  from 
Koniggratz  to  Frankenstein,  where  he  took  post  (May  31st). 
Opposed  to  him  was  General  Fouque  at  Landshut,  with  some 
12,000  men,  Prince  Henry  having  moved  up  from  Sagan 
to  the  Wartha  to  check  the  Russian  advance  from  Posen. 
Loudoun’s  real  objective  was  the  fortress  of  Glatz,  but  he  had 
first  to  dispose  of  Fouque.  By  feinting  at  Breslau  he  induced 
Fouque  to  leave  Landshut,  to  which  place  he  promptly  pushed 
forward  his  advanced  guard,  himself  taking  post  at  Pischwitz 
and  forming  the  blockade  of.  Glatz.  Frederick  thereupon 
(June  14th)  ordered  PMuque  to  reoccupy  Landshut.  It  was  a 
disastrous  order :  the  Prussian’s  advance  was  checked  on  the 
ridge  behind  Landshut  and  Loudoun  came  up  with  large 
reinforcements.  On  the  early  morning  of  June  23rd  a 
converging  attack  was  delivered  on  Fouque’s  unfortunate 
force.  The  two  principal  redoubts  were  carried  after  nearly 
two  hours’  fighting,  and  by  9  a.m.  the  survivors  of  the  division 
had  laid  down  their  arms.  Some  few  escaped,  but  1500  were 
18 


274  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1760 


killed  and  8300  taken,  mostly  wounded,  the  Austrians  having 
some  3000  casualties  in  a  force  of  30,000. 

To  retrieve  this  disaster,  Frederick  set  off  for  Silesia 
himself;  but  Daun  moved  by  Bautzen  and  Gorlitz  over  the 
Queiss  at  Naumburg  and  united  with  Loudoun,  whom  he  had 
called  up  to  the  Katzbach,  on  July  7th,  Lacy  being  with  a 
separate  corps  at  Bischofswerda,  Frederick  in  an  interior 
position  at  Bautzen.  Finding  his  road  to  Silesia  barred  by 
the  junction  of  Daun  and  Loudoun,  the  King  fell  back  on  his 
other  alternative.  Turning  round  he  dashed  at  Lacy  (July  8th) 
but  missed  him,  for  that  general  slipped  away  back  across  the 
Elbe  and  joined  the  Army  of  the  Empire  at  Gross-Sedlitz. 
Frederick  thereupon  assailed  Dresden  only  to  meet  with  a 
stubborn  resistance  from  the  valiant  Maguire,  the  commander 
of  the  garrison.  It  was  in  vain  that  a  siege-train  specially 
brought  up  from  Magdeburg  bombarded  the  city  (July  1  8th) ; 
Maguire  held  out  most  stubbornly  until  Daun  returned  to 
his  assistance.  Daun  had  waited  to  let  Frederick  really 
commit  himself  to  the  attack  on  Dresden  before  he  started 
(July  15th)  to  its  relief.  On  the  evening  of  the  18th  he  fell 
on  a  Prussian  post  near  Weissig  with  complete  success  and 
was  thus  able  to  get  into  communication  with  Maguire. 
Frederick  had  to  raise  the  siege  and  draw  off  (July  29th)  to 
Zehren  below  Meissen,  and  there  cross  to  the  East  of  the 
Elbe.  Daun,  who  was  considerably  superior  in  numbers, 
once  again  neglected  a  good  chance  by  not  forcing  on  a 
battle. 

Meanwhile  Loudoun  had  returned  from  the  Katzbach  to 
Glatz,  and  pushed  on  the  siege  with  such  vigour  that  on  the 
2  1st  the  trenches  were  ready  and  on  July  26th,  after  a  redoubt 
and  the  covered  way  had  been  stormed,  the  fortress  surrendered. 
Loudoun  promptly  pushed  on  to  Breslau,  arriving  there 
July  3 1  st,  and  at  once  began  preparing  to  bombard  it. 
Luckily  for  Prussia,  General  Tauenzien,  the  officer  in  command 
of  the  7  weak  battalions  which  with  numerous  convalescents 
formed  the  4000  men  of  the  garrison,  was  a  soldier  of  great 
resolution,  who  held  out  stoutly  although  Loudoun  bombarded 
the  city  with  great  effect.  In  making  this  dash  at  Breslau  the 
Austrian  general  had  counted  on  the  assistance  of  Soltikov 
who  had  promised  to  leave  Posen  on  July  23rd  and  to  be  at 
Breslau  in  ten  days.  Loudoun  quite  reasonably  expected  that 


1760] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  III 


275 


his  Russian  colleague  would  give  occupation  to  Prince  Henry 
and  prevent  him  interfering  with  the  siege,  and  it  was  much 
to  his  disgust  that  he  learnt  on  August  2nd  that  whereas 
Prince  Henry,  who  had  made  a  rapid  march  from  Landsberg 
on  the  Wartha,  was  pressing  on  his  outposts,  Soltikov  was  still 
East  of  the  Oder  and  would  not  reach  Breslau  for  another 
week.  Compelled  to  raise  the  siege,  Loudoun  fell  back  to 
Striegau  (August  7th)  to  avoid  losing  his  communications  with 
Daun.  Meanwhile  Frederick  had  started  for  Silesia  on 
August  3rd,  and  on  the  7th  he  reached  Bunzlau,  having 
covered  100  miles  in  five  days.  Daun,  moving  parallel  more 
slowly,  though  far  faster  than  his  usual  pace,  was  at  Bautzen 
on  the  3rd,  at  Schmottseifen  on  the  Queiss  on  the  7th. 
Frederick’s  object  was  now  to  effect  a  junction  with  his 
brother  before  the  Russians,  who  were  now  quite  close  to 
Breslau,  could  fall  on  Henry  and  overwhelm  him.  Accordingly 
he  moved  on  (August  9th)  to  the  Katzbach,  and  on  the  10th 
reached  Liegnitz  by  the  left  bank  of  the  river,  Daun  moving 
along  the  right.  At  Liegnitz,  Frederick  found  himself  beset  by 
enemies;  a  move  across  the  Katzbach  proved  unavailing,  and 
on  the  13th  he  returned  to  Liegnitz.  To  the  South  lay  Daun 
at  Jauer,  to  the  South-West,  at  Goldberg,  Lacy,  forming  Daun’s 
rearguard,  to  the  East,  Loudoun  at  Koischwitz.  To  cover 
the  despatch  of  his  transport  trains  to  Glogau  to  replenish  his 
supplies  from  that  ample  magazine,  Frederick  evacuated 
Liegnitz,  leaving  all  his  fires  burning  (p.m.  Aug.  14th), 
and  advanced  to  the  Pfaffendorf  Heights,  where  he  meant  to 
encamp  and  there  to  await  the  return  of  his  convoy  before 
pushing  through  by  Parchwitz  to  join  Prince  Henry.  His  men 
had  barely  reached  the  position  when  about  3  a.m.  (August 
15  th)  they  were  suddenly  attacked  from  the  Eastward.  The 
assailants  were  Loudoun’s  corps,  which  in  accordance  with  a 
scheme  already  arranged  was  moving  up  to  seize  the  same 
heights  and  so  bar  the  way  to  Glogau ;  at  the  same  time  Daun 
was  to  fall  on  the  Prussians  from  the  Southward  and  Lacy  to 
assail  them  in  flank  from  Goldberg.  Frederick’s  change  of 
position  had  upset  this  scheme,  but  Loudoun  was  not  the 
man  to  draw  back.  Though  taken  by  surprise,  he  boldly 
attacked  Frederick’s  position,  which  rested  on  the  right  on 
the  Katzbach  at  Panten  and  was  covered  on  the  left  by  the 
Hummel  Wood.  His  men  had  hardly  been  prepared  for  the 


276  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1760 


case  shot  with  which  they  were  greeted  as  they  came  up  in 
close  order,  but  Loudoun  rose  to  the  emergency.  He  ex¬ 
tended  his  lines  to  the  right  and  gradually  forced  the  Prussian 
left  back,  though  they  managed  to  prevent  him  from  turning 
their  flank.  Had  Daun  come  up  on  the  Prussian  rear  at  this 
time  and  fallen  on  Ziethen  and  Wedel,  who  lay  behind  the 
Schwarzwasser,  Frederick’s  position  would  have  been  precarious  ; 
but  neither  Daun  nor  Lacy  put  in  an  appearance.  Repeated 
attacks  by  Loudoun  could  thus  be  met  by  fresh  troops  from 
the  Prussian  reserves.  At  last  about  6  a.m.,  seeing  no  signs 
of  his  colleagues,  Loudoun  drew  off  in  excellent  order,  having 
lost  10,000  all  told  out  of  some  30,000.  It  was  not  his  fault 
that  the  scheme  for  the  annihilation  of  the  Prussians  had 
miscarried.  Indeed,  Daun  and  Lacy  were  very  much  to 
blame.  Deceived  by  Frederick’s  stratagem  of  leaving  the 
fires  burning  in  his  old  camp,  they  had  not  discovered  his 
departure  till  about  2  a.m.  They  then  moved  very  slowly, 
never  heard  the  sound  of  Loudoun’s  guns  as  the  wind  was 
blowing  from  the  West,  and  came  up  to  the  Schwarzwasser 
about  5  a.m.  to  find  Ziethen  drawn  up  to  receive  them.  A 
mild  attack  by  Daun’s  vanguard  was  so  warmly  received  by 
Ziethen,  that  when  Frederick’s  columns  appeared  in  his  support 
Daun  drew  off,  while  Lacy,  who  had  been  detached  to  cross  the 
river  higher  up,  failed  to  do  so.  Superior  in  numbers  as  he 
was,  Daun  ought  to  have  brought  Frederick  to  action.  He 
had  been  somewhat  remiss  in  letting  Frederick  get  away 
unobserved  ;  but  his  failure  to  succour  Loudoun  need  not  be 
ascribed  to  jealousy  of  his  more  capable  subordinate,  his 
conduct  was  too  much  of  a  piece  with  his  habitual  deliberation 
and  want  of  enterprise  to  justify  that  suspicion,  but  it  was  a 
serious  error  not  to  have  forced  on  a  battle. 

Frederick  utilised  his  success  with  the  utmost  promptitude. 
Within  four  hours  of  the  end  of  the  battle  he  was  moving  off 
towards  Parchwitz,  having  sent  a  peasant  with  a  message  to 
Prince  Henry  which  he  was  instructed  to  let  fall  into  Russian 
hands.  The  Russian  vanguard  under  Czernitchev,  already 
across  the  Oder,  alarmed  at  the  prospect  of  being  attacked 
simultaneously  by  Henry  and  Frederick,  fell  back  at  once  to 
the  safety  of  the  right  bank,  while  Frederick  pushed  on  to 
Breslau,  encamping  near  that  city  on  the  evening  of  the  19th. 
Liegnitz  had,  however,  been  an  escape  rather  than  a  victory ; 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  III 


277 


1760] 

and,  as  before,  if  the  Austrians  and  the  Russians  had  combined 
vigorously  they  might  have  gained  a  decisive  advantage.  But 
after  Loudoun’s  experience  of  Daun’s  co-operation  on  August 
15  th,  the  Russians  were  very  chary  of  trusting  overmuch  to 
the  Austrian  commander,  and  he,  preferring  to  out-manoeuvre 
his  enemy  rather  than  force  him  to  fight,  wasted  time  on 
manoeuvres  which  were  useless  because  their  object  was  not 
the  only  object  which  could  have  been  of  any  real  benefit, 
a  decisive  pitched  battle.  The  inactivity  of  the  Russians 
allowed  Frederick  to  leave  12,000  men  under  General  von 
Goltz  to  observe  them  and  to  call  up  the  rest  of  Prince 
Henry’s  corps  to  join  him  (August  29th),  and  with  his  force 
thus  increased  to  50,000  men,  he  was  able  to  foil  all  Daun’s 
efforts  to  form  the  siege  of  Schweidnitz.  But  this  was  all  he 
could  achieve  and  meanwhile  in  other  quarters  the  Prussian 
arms  were  not  over  successful.  In  Saxony,  von  Hiilsen  had 
been  beaten  by  the  much  improved  Imperial  army  which  had 
taken  Torgau  and  Wittenberg  and  practically  driven  him  out 
of  the  country.  In  Pomerania,  Colberg  was  sore  beset  by  sea 
and  land  by  a  joint  force  of  Swedes  and  Russians,  though 
towards  the  end  of  September  a  detachment  from  the  corps  of 
von  Goltz  managed  to  raise  the  siege. 

It  was  not  much  to  the  credit  of  Soltikov  that  von  Goltz 
should  have  been  able  to  make  this  detachment  in  safety,  but 
the  Russian  general  was  busy  planning  a  raid  on  Berlin 
by  5000  men  under  Tottleben,  supported  by  Czernitchev’s 
corps.  In  this  Daun  decided  to  co-operate,  and  Lacy  from 
near  Bunzlau  was  pushed  up  by  Cottbus  to  Berlin  (Sept. 
28th  to  Oct.  7th).  He  found  that  after  a  futile  bombard¬ 
ment  Tottleben  had  fallen  back  on  the  arrival  of  a  corps 
under  Eugene  of  Wiirtemberg.  Next  day,  however, 
Czernitchev  arrived,  and  despite  Htilsen’s  reinforcing  Eugene 
with  his  corps  from  .Saxony,  the  Prussian  troops  had  to 
evacuate  Berlin,  which  capitulated  (Oct.  9th),  and  to  retire 
to  Spandau.  Heavy  contributions  were  exacted  from  the  city, 
but  the  raid  proved  for  all  practical  purposes  as  barren 
as  that  of  Hadik  in  1757;  for  on  a  rumour  of  Frederick’s 
approach  the  Allies  took  their  departure,  Lacy  for  Torgau, 
the  Russians  for  the  Oder. 

Frederick  had  indeed  broken  up  from  Bunzelwitz  on 
October  7th,  and  had  moved  on  Berlin,  his  movements  being, 


278  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1760 


as  usual,  quite  unimpeded  by  the  over-cautious  Daun ;  but 
at  Giiben  he  heard  that  Berlin  had  been  evacuated.  He  then 
left  von  Goltz,  reinforced  to  20,000  men,  in  Silesia  and 
moved  rapidly  into  Saxony.  He  reached  the  Elbe  near 
Wittenberg  (Oct.  26th),  crossed  and  picked  up  the 
divisions  of  Hiilsen  and  Eugene  (14,000)  next  day.  Before 
his  approach  the  Army  of  the  Empire  had  fallen  back  from 
Wittenberg  on  Leipzig,  while  Daun  had  left  his  old  positions 
(Oct.  7th)  and  moved  to  the  Elbe  by  Naumburg  (10th)  and 
Ullersdorf.  On  the  22nd  Daun  joined  Lacy  near  Torgau 
and  then  crossed  to  the  left  bank  so  as  to  get  nearer  the 
Army  of  the  Empire.  On  the  27th  he  was  at  Eilenburg, 
Frederick  moving  to  Diiben  (Oct.  29th)  and  pushing 
Hiilsen  out  to  Leipzig  (Oct.  3 1st),  from  which  the  Imperial 
army  retired.  Daun  thereupon  fell  back  upon  his  magazines 
at  Torgau  (Nov.  1st).  Here  Frederick  resolved  to  attack 
him.  The  Austrian  army  was  ranged  between  the  Suptitz 
heights,  where  their  right  and  right-centre  lay,  and  the  town 
of  Torgau,  which  was  on  their  left.  In  front  of  the  left, 
formed  by  Lacy’s  corps,  was  a  large  pond,  connected  with 
the  Suptitz  heights  by  a  stream,  the  so-called  Rohrgraben. 
For  defence  against  a  frontal  attack  from  the  South  the 
position  was  extremely  strong,  so  Frederick,  despite  the  fact 
that  he  had  under  50,000  men  to  oppose  to  Daun’s  63,000 
with  360  guns,  decided  on  a  double  attack.  Ziethen  (18,000) 
was  to  advance  up  the  great  road  from  Schilda  to  Suptitz  and 
attack  the  heights  in  front,  timing  his  movements  so  as  to 
coincide  with  the  appearance  on  the  right  rear  of  the 
Austrians  of  the  Prussian  centre  and  left,  as  the  result  of  a 
wide  sweeping  movement  through  the  woods  to  the  West 
by  Weidenhayn  and  Elsnig.  Ziethen,  having  a  far  shorter 
distance  to  go  than  the  turning  columns,  should  have  delayed 
until  Frederick  was  ready ;  but  Frederick  was  behind  time, 
and  the  Prussian  right  coming  into  touch  with  Lacy’s  out¬ 
posts  swerved  to  the  right  towards  Torgau  and  became  pre¬ 
maturely  engaged,  only  to  be  beaten  off  with  heavy  loss. 
Meanwhile  Daun,  whose  light  troops  had  informed  him  of 
Frederick’s  flanking  movement,  had  altered  his  dispositions  to 
meet  the  attack,  forming  a  new  front  facing  North-West  and 
well  provided  with  guns  from  the  reserve  artillery  park  at 
Grosswig.  Frederick’s  own  division,  the  innermost  of  the 


1760] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  III 


279 


three  columns  engaged  in  the  turning  movement,  was  the 
first  to  come  up,  and  though  alone  it  advanced  to  the  attack 
about  2  p.m. ;  but  the  heavy  fire  of  the  Austrian  guns  played 
havoc  with  the  Prussian  grenadiers  and  the  attack  failed. 
Hiilsen  coming  up  about  3  p.m.  was  put  in  with  no  better 
success,  his  men  failing  to  face  the  guns.  Meanwhile  nothing 
had  been  heard  of  Frederick’s  extreme  left,  which  was 
blundering  about  in  the  woods.  It  arrived  about  4.30,  just 
in  time  to  check  the  Austrians  who  were  following  up  the 
repulse  of  Hiilsen’s  foot,  but  this  success  was  only  temporary. 
Daun  rallied  his  men,  brought  up  new  regiments  from  his 
reserve,  and  when  about  7  p.m.  he  was  wounded  and  had  to 
leave  the  field,  it  was  with  the  full  assurance  of  victory.  But 
at  last  Ziethen  came  up  against  the  Suptitz  heights,  on  which 
he  should  have  directed  his  attack  much  earlier,  and  renewed 
the  fight.  The  Austrians,  disordered  by  their  victory  and 
surprised  by  this  unexpected  attack,  repulsed  Ziethen  once 
but  he  came  on  again :  an  undefended  causeway  over  the 
Rohrgraben  was  found,  and  about  8  p.m.  the  Prussians  were 
in  possession  of  the  Weinberg  behind  Suptitz  village  and  the 
Austrians  were  in  retreat  on  Torgau.  Both  sides  had  lost 
heavily,  the  Prussians  somewhat  the  most,  as  the  failure  of 
their  early  attacks  had  cost  them  in  addition  some  3000 
prisoners.  It  was  a  curious  action.  Frederick’s  original  plan 
failed  because  he  had  not  allowed  enough  time,  and  because 
Ziethen  did  not  obey  orders.  His  own  attack  was  premature 
and  disastrous,  and,  finally,  it  was  only  Ziethen’s  renewed 
attack  in  the  dusk  which  turned  an  imminent  defeat  into  a 
victory.  The  Austrians  allowed  victory  to  be  wrested  from 
them  through  unsteadiness  in  the  hour  of  success.  Torgau, 
however,  failed  to  shake  the  Austrian  hold  on  Saxony. 
They  did  retire  across  the  Elbe,  but  Frederick  was  in  no 
position  to  follow  up  his  success,  and  the  end  of  the  campaign 
saw  them  in  their  old  positions  round  Dresden,  Frederick 
wintering  at  Meissen.  In  his  absence  from  Silesia  nothing 
had  been  achieved ;  the  departure  of  the  Russians,  the  badness 
of  the  weather,  and  his  inability  to  bring  von  Goltz’s  corps  to 
action  had  prevented  Loudoun  from  taking  Cosel.  Farther 
North,  Werner  after  relieving  Colberg  had  had  a  slight 
success  over  the  Swedes  at  Pasewalk,  which  was  quite  enough 
to  paralyse  any  Swedish  attack  on  Berlin. 


280  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1760 


In  this  year  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick  had  for  once  not 
been  able  to  hold  the  ground  he  had  won  in  the  previous 
campaign.  Reinforced  before  the  campaign  opened  by  5 
regiments  of  cavalry  and  8  infantry  battalions  from  Eng¬ 
land,  he  took  the  field  in  May,  taking  post  at  Fritzlar  with 
his  main  body,  a  detached  corps  being  at  Kirchhain  on  the 
Ohm  and  the  troops  guarding  Westphalia  between  Coesfeld 
and  Hamm.  Not  till  the  middle  of  June  did  the  French, 
who  had  a  great  superiority  in  numbers,  move  up  from  the 
Main  by  Giessen.  Ferdinand  moved  South  to  meet  them, 
but  the  failure  of  General  Imhoff  to  hold  the  pass  of  Homberg 
in  front  of  Kirchhain  allowed  de  Broglie  to  force  this  barrier 
and  reach  Neustadt  (June  24th).  The  French  commander  now 
endeavoured  to  hold  Ferdinand  in  check  while  St.  Germain  and 
the  Army  of  the  Rhine  were  coming  up  to  Corbach  to  join 
the  Army  of  the  Main.  On  July  7th  de  Broglie  also 
marched  off  towards  Corbach,  upon  which  Ferdinand 
endeavoured  to  get  in  between  him  and  his  colleague,  seize 
the  Sachsenhausen  Pass,  and  so  prevent  their  junction  :  St. 
Germain  was  too  swift  for  him,  and  Ferdinand’s  attack  was 
beaten  off  with  considerable  loss  (July  10th).  He  fell  back 
to  Sachsenhausen,  called  up  Sporcke  from  Westphalia  to 
Volksmarsen  on  the  Diemel  and  remained  facing  the  French, 
who  lay  to  the  Westward  of  him  at  Corbach.  A  move 
against  his  left  he  foiled  at  Emsdorff,  where  a  British  dragoon 
regiment1  greatly  distinguished  itself  (July  16th);  but  more 
serious  threats  against  his  communications  forced  him  back 
to  Kalle,  on  which  de  Broglie  pushed  out  a  corps  under  de 
Muy,  St.  Germain’s  successor,  to  Warburg  on  the  Diemel  to 
cut  Ferdinand  off  from  Westphalia.  This  was  Ferdinand’s 
chance:  he  fell  on  de  Muy’s  corps  at  Warburg  (July  31st) 
and  routed  it  completely,  with  a  loss  of  8000  men,  a  charge 
by  Lord  Granby  and  the  British  cavalry  deciding  the  day. 
He  had,  however,  to  evacuate  Cassel  and  take  post  North  of 
the  Diemel  covering  Westphalia.  Here  he  held  de  Broglie 
in  check ;  but  that  marshal’s  superior  numbers  allowed  him  to 
detach  strong  corps  to  threaten  Brunswick  and  Hanover  along 
the  right  bank  of  the  Weser,  while  Ferdinand  could  not  move 
against  him  without  exposing  the  important  fortress  of 
Lippstadt.  Accordingly  as  a  diversion,  Ferdinand  detached 

1  15th  Light  Dragoons. 


M1NDEN  Au£.  !?*■ 1759 


TORGAU  Nov.3^.!760 


1760] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  III 


281 


his  nephew,  the  Hereditary  Prince  of  Brunswick,  Prince 
Charles  William  Ferdinand,  the  “Brunswick”  of  Valmy  and 
Auerstadt,  with  47  battalions,  10  of  them  British,  and  30 
squadrons,  8  of  which  were  British,  to  attack  the  French 
base,  Wesel  (Sept.  23rd).  The  investment  of  Wesel 
(Sept.  30th)  had  the  desired  effect,  for  de  Broglie 
detached  32  squadrons  and  31  battalions  under  de  Castries  to 
its  relief.  Crossing  at  Cologne,  October  12  th,  after  a  very 
fine  forced  march,  de  Castries  came  up  to  Rheinberg  (Oct. 
15  th),  and  thus  forced  the  Prince,  who  had  only  22 
squadrons  and  2 1  battalions  available,  to  move  out  against 
him  with.  A  rash  attempt  to  surprise  the  French  at 
Klostercampen  miscarried,  and  after  a  sharp  fight  (Oct. 

1 6th)  the  Prince  found  himself  compelled  to  recross  the 
Rhine,  raise  the  siege  of  Wesel  and  take  post  in  Westphalia 
to  cover  Lippstadt  and  Munster.  Ferdinand  thus  found 
himself  unable  to  shake  de  Broglie’s  hold  on  Hesse,  and  the 
campaign  closed  with  the  Anglo-German  army  lying  North 
of  the  Diemel,  with  Gottingen  in  French  hands  and  Hanover 
and  Brunswick  exposed  to  their  attacks  through  their  pos¬ 
session  of  the  passage  of  the  Weser  at  Mtinden. 

After  a  winter  which  had  been  spent  in  the  usual  abortive 
discussions  about  making  peace,  Daun  was  once  again,  much 
to  the  annoyance  of  the  Allies,  placed  in  command  of  the 
Austrian  forces  for  the  campaign  of  1761.  There  was  indeed 
no  alternative,  for  the  senior  officers  of  the  army  would  have 
all  refused  to  serve  under  one  as  much  their  junior  as  Loudoun 
or  even  Lacy,  so  that  these  two  were  both  impossible.  As 
before,  Daun’s  plan  of  campaign  was  purely  defensive  ;  the  main 
army,  100,000  strong,  was  to  gather  in  Saxony  and  to  confine 
itself  to  observing  Frederick,  while  the  subsidiary  corps  under 
Loudoun  in  Silesia,  reduced  to  30,000  men,  was  to  protect 
Glatz  against  recapture  and  to  cover  Bohemia  and  Moravia 
from  attack.  Loudoun  protested  vigorously  against  so  pre¬ 
posterous  a  plan.  He  saw  clearly  that  it  was  not  “  masterly 
inactivity  ”  but  a  vigorous  offensive  which  was  the  true  line, 
that  Frederick  could  be  beaten  by  attrition  even  if  he  could 
not  be  beaten  in  the  field.  His  views  were  warmly  supported 
by  Kaunitz ;  and  as  Buturlin,  the  new  Russian  commander, 
seemed  most  anxious  for  an  energetic  prosecution  of  the  war, 
it  was  arranged  that  Daun  and  the  main  army  should  “  contain  ” 


282  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1761 


Frederick  in  Saxony,  while  Loudoun  with  a  second  army  was 
to  operate  in  Silesia  with  the  assistance  of  the  Russian  main 
body.  Colberg  was,  as  before,  to  be  attacked  by  the  Russian 
fleet  and  by  a  detached  corps  by  land.  Hardly  had  this  plan 
been  adopted  when  Frederick,  leaving  30,000  men  in  Saxony 
under  Prince  Henry,  hurried  to  Silesia  with  the  rest  of  his 
available  forces  to  join  von  Goltz,  whom  he  thus  saved  from 
Loudoun.  It  seems  probable  that  one  of  Peter’s  adherents  in 
the  Russian  Council  had  betrayed  the  plan  of  campaign  to  the 
Grand  Duke’s  favourite  hero.  Loudoun,  however,  contrary  to 
expectation,  was  not  compelled  to  leave  Glatz  to  its  fate  but 
maintained  his  post.  With  some  difficulty  he  obtained  re¬ 
inforcements  from  Daun,  until  by  July  19th  he  had  nearly 
60,000  men.  With  these  he  set  out  by  Frankenstein  and 
Mtinsterberg,  intending  to  join  the  Russians,  who  were  creeping 
up  slowly  to  the  Oder  along  the  Polish  frontier.  Frederick  by 
a  rapid  march  planted  himself  across  Loudoun’s  path  at  Neisse 
(July  23rd),  but  the  Austrian  induced  his  Russian  colleague 
to  push  on  down  the  Oder  and  to  cross  below  Breslau,  which 
he  did  on  August  1  2th.  A  rapid  march  brought  Loudoun  to 
Liegnitz,  and  on  the  19th  a  junction  was  effected  near  that 
town.  Out-manceuvred  in  the  attempt  to  prevent  the  junction, 
FYederick  was  reduced  to  a  purely  defensive  attitude,  and  took 
post  at  Bunzelwitz  near  Schweidnitz  (Aug.  20th).  Loudoun 
urged  Buturlin  to  attack  at  once  before  the  Prussians  could 
fortify  their  position  ;  and  as  the  Austrians  and  Russians  had 
more  than  double  Frederick’s  force,1  a  prompt  attack  would 
have  had  excellent  chances  of  success.  But  while  Buturlin 
hesitated,  Frederick  entrenched  himself  with  feverish  haste  and 
the  favourable  moment  passed.  Buturlin’s  hesitation  was  not 
unconnected  with  political  considerations.  Elizabeth  was  in  a 
most  precarious  state  of  health,  at  any  moment  the  news 
might  arrive  from  St  Petersburg  that  she  was  dead,  and  it 
would  not  be  exactly  a  passport  to  the  new  Czar’s  favour  to 
have  just  assisted  to  destroy  the  last  army  of  Prussia. 
Accordingly,  Loudoun  had  the  mortification  of  seeing  the 
favourable  opportunity  escape  ;  and  he  must  have  been  heartily 
relieved  when,  on  September  9th,  Buturlin  departed  home¬ 
wards  but  left  a  corps  under  Czernitchev  16,000  strong  behind 

1  Oncken,  ii.  326,  gives  Austrians  83,000,  Russians  42,000,  Prussians  50,000 :  von 
Arneth,  vol.  vi.,  does  not  put  Loudoun  above  60,000. 


1761] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  III 


283 


him.  Loudoun’s  enemies  had  profited  by  his  failure  to  achieve 
success  even  when  he  had  60,000  men  under  him  to  complain 
bitterly  and  intrigue  against  him,  and  orders  had  been  sent 
to  him  to  detach  40,000  men  to  Saxony  to  enable  Daun 
to  take  up  winter-quarters  in  Lusatia,  when  he  was  able  to 
confront  his  critics  with  the  capture  of  Schweidnitz.  Want  of 
provisions  had  forced  Frederick  to  leave  Bunzelwitz  about 
September  23rd.  He  had  moved  as  though  to  invade  Moravia, 
but  he  could  not  draw  Loudoun  off  from  Schweidnitz. 
Detaching  light  troops  to  follow  and  harass  Frederick,  Loudoun 
moved  on  Schweidnitz  with  15,000  men  and  assaulting  its 
somewhat  dilapidated  works  at  five  places  (p.m.  Sept. 
30th),  carried  it  by  storm.  By  7  a.m.  October  1st,  Schweidnitz 
was  for  the  second  time  in  the  war  in  Austrian  hands.1  This 
blow  checked  Frederick’s  stroke  at  Moravia,  he  fell  back  to 
Strehlen  to  cover  Breslau,  Brieg  and  Neisse.  Loudoun  should 
now  have  been  reinforced  by  every  available  man  from  Daun’s 
army ;  but  instead  of  this  the  former  plan  was  carried  out  on 
a  modified  scale,  and  Loudoun  had  to  detach  over  10,000  men 
to  Saxony.  Here  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  Prince  Henry 
had  found  little  difficulty  in  “  containing  ”  the  much  superior 
forces  of  Daun  and  the  Imperial  army  under  Serbelloni.  Not 
even  when  Loudoun’s  men  came  up  was  he  as  much  as 
expelled  from  Saxony.  His  manoeuvres  were  skilful  and  did 
him  great  credit,  but  it  was  to  Daun’s  want  of  strategic  insight 
that  he  really  owed  his  escape.  One  success  only  the  Allies 
did  gain.  Colberg,  closely  blockaded  by  the  Russian  fleet, 
and  hard  pressed  by  Rumanjev  with,  35,000  men,  was  forced 
to  surrender  (Dec.  16th)  after  Eugene  of  Wiirtemberg  had 
failed  in  a  gallant  attempt  to  relieve  it.  With  Colberg  much 
of  Pomerania  passed  into  Russian  hands. 

From  the  Western  theatre  of  war  came  news  which  must 
have  cheered  Frederick.  An  advance  into  Hesse  in  February 


1  In  connection  with  this  episode  von  Arneth  points  out  how  unfair  it  is  to  attribute 
all  the  non-success  of  the  Austrian  arms  to  the  interference  of  the  Hofkriegsrath  at 
Vienna  with  the  operations  of  the  generals.  That  body  was  concerned  with  raising 
recruits  and  providing  supplies  for  the  army,  with  its  administration  not  with  its 
operations.  It  was  the  generals,  especially  Daun,  who  continually  referred  important 
points  to  the  decision  of  Maria  Theresa  and  Kaunitz,  though  they  begged  the 
commanders  not  to  do  so  but  to  act  on  their  own  initiative.  Loudoun  in  this  instance 
acted  on  his  own  initiative  ;  and  though  he  thus  interfered  with  a  plan  arranged  at 
Vienna  was  not  reprimanded  in  any  way. 


284  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1761 


by  which  Ferdinand  attempted  to  surprise  the  French  in  their 
winter-quarters,  met  with  great  success  for  a  time ;  but  in 
pressing  on  to  reach  a  district  in  which  he  could  feed  his  troops 
as  he  went,  he  was  forced  to  leave  large  detachments  behind 
to  besiege  Cassel  and  Marburg,  and  de  Broglie  concentrating  a 
considerable  force  at  Giessen  defeated  the  Hereditary  Prince 
of  Brunswick  at  Griinberg  (March  21)  and  forced  Ferdinand 
back  behind  the  Diemel.  Here  he  had  to  await  reinforce¬ 
ments  and  to  refresh  his  exhausted  men,  while  Soubise  collected 
100,000  men  at  Wesel  and  prepared  to  advance  Eastward 
through  Westphalia,  de  Broglie  with  60,000  coming  up  from 
Hesse.  Not  till  June  13th  did  Soubise  cross  the  Rhine, 
whereon  Ferdinand,  his  army  refreshed  by  ten  weeks’  rest, 
moved  boldly  West  to  Dortmund  to  threaten  the  French 
communications.  This  move,  indeed,  left  open  the  road  by 
which  the  two  French  armies  could  unite;  but  it  startled 
Soubise,  who  made  no  attempt  to  turn  on  his  enemy,  but 
hastened  to  Soest  to  unite  with  his  colleague  (July  10th). 
Their  joint  force  mustered  over  100,000;  Ferdinand,  even 
after  Sporcke’s  Hanoverians,  who.  had  been  forcing  de  Broglie, 
joined  him,  had  only  60,000  ;  but  he  stood  firm  on  the  Southern 
bank  of  the  Lippe  at  Vellinghausen,  and  the  French,  finding 
that  before  they  could  take  Lippstadt  they  must  beat  Ferdinand, 
attacked  him  (July  1  5  th  to  16th)  there,  only  to  be  defeated  with 
heavy  loss.  The  brunt  of  the  battle  fell  on  the  Allied  left,  where 
Granby’s  corps,  mainly  British,  was  posted  ;  but  the  failure  of 
Soubise  to  support  de  Broglie  was  the  chief  cause  of  the  defeat. 
Discontented  with  each  other, the  French  generals  then  separated, 
Soubise  returning  to  Wesel,  followed  by  the  Hereditary  Prince, 
de  Broglie  moving  East  to  threaten  Hanover,  with  Ferdinand 
after  him.  As  soon  as  the  two  marshals  were  well  apart,  Ferdi¬ 
nand  struck  at  de  Broglie’s  communications  with  Frankfort 
(Aug.  10th),  a  blow  which  brought  him  back  from  Hameln  and 
Gottingen  to  Cassel ;  a  second  move  across  the  Weser  against 
Hanover  was  frustrated  in  the  same  way  (Sept.),  while 
later  on  again  a  corps  which  de  Broglie  detached  to  Brunswick 
(Oct.)  was  headed  back,  though  he  did  retain  Gottingen. 
Meanwhile  Soubise  moved  into  East  Friesland,  took  Emb- 
den  and  threatened  Bremen,  but  was  forced  to  retire  by  the 
Hereditary  Prince.  Thus  for  all  their  twofold  superiority  in 
numbers  the  French  achieved  nothing  in  yet  another  campaign. 


1 761  j  THE  SEVEN  YEARS"  WAR,  III  285 

But  if  Frederick  had  once  again  reached  the  end  of  a 
campaign  without  being  destroyed,  his  plight  was  of  the  worst. 
His  resources  were  strained  to  the  utmost,  and  he  had  nothing 
to  which  he  could  point  as  a  set-off  against  Colberg  and 
Schweidnitz.  On  the  other  hand,  Choiseurs  bellicose  views 
were  things  of  the  past  and  he  was  seeking  to  bring  about 
peace  by  means  of  separate  negotiations  between  England  and 
France.  Indeed,  he  had  gone  to  the  length  of  drawing  up  a 
draft  treaty  with  John  Stanley,  the  English  agent  at  Paris, 
when  Stahremberg  reminded  him  that  such  a  treaty,  if  it  left 
England  free  to  prosecute  the  war  on  behalf  of  Prussia,  would 
be  contrary  to  the  most  recent  Franco- Austrian  agreement,  that 
of  1758.  This  produced  a  warm  conflict  between  the  Allies, 
Kaunitz  having  little  difficulty  in  showing  that  Choiseul’s 
conduct,  whether  the  right  policy  for  France  or  not,  was  a 
breach  of  her  obligations.  He  would,  however,  have  raised  no 
objection  if  the  peace  had  debarred  both  France  and  England 
from  assisting  their  old  allies,  but  the  negotiations  never 
reached  this  point.  For  some  time  past  the  relations  between 
England  and  Spain  had  been  of  a  strained  character,  and 
Choiseul’s  fertile  brain  saw  in  this  a  chance  of  throwing 
the  weight  of  Spain  into  the  colonial  and  maritime  struggle 
which  had  gone  so  badly  for  France.  Pitt,  fully  aware  of  the 
PTanco-Spanish  negotiations,1  was  anxious  to  bring  matters  to 
a  crisis,  and  placed  before  his  colleagues  the  definite  issue  of 
peace  or  war.  They  seized  the  opportunity  of  getting  rid  of 
him,  though  it  is  probable  that  they  were  for  the  most  part 
genuinely  convinced  of  Spain’s  good  intentions.  They  were 
undeceived,  however,  when  Spain,  the  Plate  Fleet  once  safely 
in,  adopted  so  uncompromising  a  tone  that  England  had 
no  option  but  to  declare  war  (Jan.  5th,  1762),  whereupon  the 
Anglo-French  negotiations  were  broken  off.  Choiseul,  hoping 
that  the  aid  of  Spain  would  enable  France  to  retrieve  the 
losses  she  had  sustained,  was  once  more  as  bellicose  as  ever, 
and  when  Austria  made  tentative  inquiries  as  to  the  attitude 
of  France  towards  a  peace,  she  found  her  ally  inclined  to  go  on 
with  the  war.  Austria  herself  was  not  disinclined  to  peace. 
Her  resources  had  been  strained  to  their  limits.  Every  possible 
financial  expedient  had  been  tried,  an  income-tax,  a  10  per  cent. 

1  The  secret  treaty  was  signed  August  16th,  1761,  but  the  Spanish  declaration  of 
War  was  deferred  until  the  treasure-ships  from  Spanish  America  should  be  in. 


286  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1762 


succession-duty,  heavy  poll-taxes  on  a  graduated  scale.1  But 
even  so  the  expenditure  far  exceeded  the  revenue,  and,  much 
against  Lacy’s  wishes,  before  the  campaign  of  1762  every 
regiment  had  to  be  cut  down  by  two  companies. 

Pitt’s  fall  (Oct.  5th,  1761)  was  in  itself  something  of  an 
encouragement  to  Austria.  The  new  King,  George  III,  had 
boasted  that  he  was  no  Hanoverian  but  “  gloried  in  the  name 
of  Briton,”  and  his  new  minister,  Bute,  wished  to  take  advan¬ 
tage  of  the  national  dislike  for  paying  heavy  subsidies  to 
German  Princes  by  getting  rid  of  the  continental  war.  But 
any  advantage  that  Austria  might  have  gained  in  this  way 
was  more  than  balanced  by  the  death,  on  January  5th,  1762, 
of  the  Czarina  Elizabeth.  Nothing  could  have  been  more 
timely  for  Frederick.  The  failure  of  the  Russian  armies  to 
accomplish  all  that  might  have  been  hoped  from  them  was  in 
no  degree  due  to  lack  of  goodwill  or  keenness  on  the  part  of 
Elizabeth.  It  is  partly  to  be  attributed  to  the  inefficient  state 
of  the  Russian  army,  especially  of  its  administration,  but  still 
more  to  the  fact  that  the  Russian  generals  were  well  acquainted 
with  the  Grand  Duke  Peter’s  enthusiastic  admiration  for 
Frederick.2  To  this  admiration  Peter  proceeded  to  give 
practical  expression,  first  by  concluding  an  armistice  with 
Prussia  and  recalling  Czernitchev’s  corps  from  Loudoun’s  army 
(March),  then  by  making  a  definite  peace  (May),  evacuating 
East  Prussia  altogether  without  any  demand  for  compensation 
— which  caused  much  discontent  in  Russia, — and  guaranteeing 
Silesia  to  Frederick.  He  in  return  guaranteed  Holstein  to 
Peter.  Sweden,  whose  part  in  the  war  had  been  neither 
prominent  nor  very  satisfactory  to  herself,  followed  her  neigh¬ 
bour’s  example  and  concluded  (May)  the  Treaty  of  Hamburg, 
which  restored  the  status  quo  ante  bellum.  The  only  compen¬ 
sating  feature  of  the  situation — from  an  Austrian  point  of 
view — was  that  all  the  arguments  of  the  Prussian  agents  failed 
to  induce  Lord  Bute  to  obtain  from  Parliament  a  renewal  of  the 
subsidy  for  the  King  of  Prussia. 

For  the  campaign  of  1762,  Austria  gathered  two  armies, 
that  in  Silesia  being  once  again  entrusted  to  Daun,  that  in 
Saxony,  which  was  to  co-operate  with  the  Army  of  the  Empire, 

1  Cf.  von  Arneth,  vi.  pp.  255  ff. 

2  Peter  in  was  the  son  of  Anna,  daughter  of  Peter  the  Great  and  Charles  Frederick 

of  IIolstein-Gottorp. 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  III 


287 


1 762] 

to  Serbelloni.  But  neither  the  latter  nor  his  Imperialist 
colleague,  Stolberg,  proved  a  match  for  Prince  Henry,  who 
managed  to  separate  them  and  drive  the  Imperial  army  back  . 
upon  Franconia.  Meanwhile  Daun  was  confining  his  efforts 
to  covering  Schweidnitz  and  Glatz  against  Frederick,  now 
reinforced  by  the  release,  by  Peter’s  orders,  of  all  the  Prussian 
prisoners  in  Russian  hands,  and  by  the  return  of  Czernitchev’s 
corps  which  Peter  declared  it  was  his  duty  as  a  Lieutenant- 
General  in  the  Prussian  service  to  place  at  Frederick’s  disposal. 
When  Czernitchev  joined  him  at  the  end  of  June,  Frederick 
took  the  offensive,  feinting  at  Daun’s  left  as  though  about  to 
invade  Bohemia.  An  attempt  by  Wied  to  seize  the  Adelsdorf 
position  (July  2nd)  was  parried  by  Daun,  and  after  some  more 
futile  manoeuvres  Frederick  resolved  to  assault  the  Austrian 
positions  South  of .  Schweidnitz,  between  Burkersdorf  and 
Dittmannsdorf.  A  corps  under  Wied  moved  round  to  the 
East  to  attack  the  Austrian  right  at  Burkersdorf  in  rear, 
Mollendorf  attacking  in  front  (July  20th).  Daun  was  somewhat 
remiss  in  looking  after  his  rear  and  Brentano,  sent  up  to  save 
Leuthmannsdorf,  arrived  too  late  and  failed  to  retake  it,  the 
result  of  which  was  that  Daun  fell  back  towards  the  Bohemian 
frontier  and  left  Schweidnitz  to  its  fate.  In  the  action  of 
July  2  I  st,  Czernitchev  had  played  a  passive  but  important  part : 
his  corps  had  manoeuvred  with  the  rest  of  Frederick’s  force,  and 
its  conduct  had  not  given  any  reason  to  suppose  that  it  was 
going  to  move  away  homewards  next  day.  But  yet  another 
change  had  taken  place  in  Russia.  Peter’s  Germanising 
tendencies  had  offended  the  army  and  the  clergy,  his  surrender 
of  East  Prussia  had  aroused  Russian  patriotism  and,  above  all, 
his  treatment  of  Catherine  had  offended  her  so  bitterly  that  she 
placed  herself  at  the  head  of  a  conspiracy  which  resulted  in  the 
deposition  (July  9th)  and  murder  (July  19th)  of  the  unfortunate 
Czar.  Catherine,  though  on  the  whole  favourable  to  Austria, 
went  no  farther  than  to  recall  Czernitchev,  otherwise  she 
accepted  the  treaty  of  May ;  but  short  as  Peter’s  reign  had  been 
he  had  managed  to  do  a  great  deal  for  Frederick,  and  among 
the  causes  which  enabled  Prussia  to  surmount  the  dangers 
which  threatened  her  Peter’s  assistance  must  take  a  high  place. 
Entrusting  the  siege  of  Schweidnitz,  which  was  begun  on 
August  4th,  to  General  Tauenzien,  Frederick  took  post  between 
Peterswaldau  and  Seitendorf  to  cover  it.  Daun  made  one 


288  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1762 


attempt  to  raise  the  siege,  but  the  failure  of  Lacy  and  Brentano 
to  adequately  support  Beck’s  headlong  onslaught  on  Bevern’s 
corps  at  Peilau  (Aug.  1 6th)  convinced  him  that  the  task  was  im¬ 
possible,  and  he  fell  back  to  the  Bohemian  frontier.  Schweidnitz 
made  a  resolute  defence,  and  the  Prussians  lacking  skill  in 
siege-craft  it  was  not  till  October  9th  that  it  surrendered.  Daun 
was  much  to  blame  for  his  inactivity  during  this  period. 
Exhausted  as  Austria  was,  Prussia  was  equally  far  spent ;  and 
had  Daun  pushed  against  Berlin  and  burnt  it,  or  joined 
Serbelloni  in  Saxony  and  forced  a  battle  on  Henry,  he  might 
have  even  at  that  late  hour  turned  the  fortunes  of  the  war,  or 
at  the  least  relieved  Schweidnitz.  In  Saxony  there  had  been 
a  last  flicker  of  military  activity.  At  the  end  of  August  the 
Imperial  army  which  had  retired  to  Baireuth  came  back  to 
Dresden  through  Eger  and  Chemnitz  and  joined  the  Austrians. 
Their  advance  forced  Henry  to  leave  his  camp  at  Pretzchendorf 
and  retire  to  Rossen  (West  of  Dresden)  on  October  22nd,  but 
Henry,  catching  the  Army  of  the  Empire  isolated  at  Freiberg 
(October  29th),  inflicted  a  severe  defeat  upon  it  which  drove  it 
back  to  Dippoldiswalde.  It  was  perhaps  appropriate  that  the 
last  battle  of  the  war  should  have  been  so  typical  of  the  utter 
collapse  of  the  Imperial  fabric,  which  the  Silesian  wars  had 
reduced  to  a  condition  of  all  but  complete  decay. 

One  set  of  operations  remains  to  be  mentioned.  The 
campaign  of  1762  was  not  the  least  creditable  of  those  fought 
by  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick  and  his  able  English  lieutenant, 
Granby.  As  usual,  the  French  had  two  armies  in  the  field, 
that  of  the  Main  under  Soubise  (80,000)  posted  from 
Altenkirchen  by  Cassel  to  Langensalza,  that  of  the  Rhine 
under  Conde  (30,000)  between  Cleves  and  Cologne.  Ferdinand 
was  first  in  the  field,  moving  up  to  the  Diemel  early  in  June; 
and  when  Soubise  came  up  to  Wilhelmsthal  and  pushed 
de  Castries  forward  in  front  of  his  right  to  Carlsdorff, 
Ferdinand  moved  against  him.  The  French  were  already 
retiring  when  Granby,  coming  up  from  Warburg,  fell  on  the 
corps  of  de  Stainville,  which  sacrificed  itself  to  cover  the 
retreat  of  the  main  body,  and  cut  it  to  pieces  (June  24th). 
Soubise  retired  across  the  P'ulda  and  took  post  between  Cassel 
and  Lutternberg,  but  Ferdinand  again  attacked  him  (July  24th) 
with  success,  and  by  pressing  against  his  communications 
drove  him  out  of  Hesse  before  the  end  of  August.  Conde 


1762] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  III 


289 


now  coming  up  from  the  Rhine,  joined  Soubise  (Aug.  30th) 
after  beating  off  the  Hereditary  Prince,  who  had  followed  his 
movements.  The  French  then  moved  on  Cassel  to  cut 
Ferdinand  off  from  that  town  ;  but  he  was  too  quick  for  them 
and,  hastening  up  the  Lahn,  headed  them  off  at  Wetter 
(Sept.  15  th).  They  fell  back  and  took  post  along  the 
Ohm,  their  left  at  Marburg,  their  right  at  Homberg, 
Ferdinand  taking  post  opposite  them.  They  made  one 
attempt  to  force  a  passage  by  the  bridge  of  Amoneburg 
(Sept.  2 1  st) ;  but  though  the  attack  was  pushed  home 
bravely,  Granby’s  division  (2  cavalry  regiments  and  8 
infantry  battalions)  came  up  to  the  succour  of  Zastrow’s 
Hanoverians  and  beat  off  every  attack.  It  was  the  last 
offensive  movement  of  the  French  in  the  war.  Cassel, 
blockaded  by  Ferdinand  as  he  moved  South,  was  now  (Oct. 
1 6th)  regularly  invested.  On  November  1st  it  fell,  and  in  a 
fortnight  came  the  news  that  an  armistice  had  been  concluded. 

When  it  became  obvious  that  not  only  was  no  more  help 
to  be  expected  from  Russia,  but  that  France  was  going  to 
conclude  a  peace  with  England  upon  terms  which  would  leave 
Maria  Theresa  isolated,  even  the  Empress  Queen  resigned 
herself  to  relinquishing  the  attempt  to  recover  the  province 
filched  from  her  in  1741.  Glatz,  it  is  true,  was  still  in  her 
hands  ;  but  she  recognised  that  its  retention  was  not  worth  the 
expense  of  another  campaign,  and  while  much  of  Saxony  was 
still  in  Frederick’s  hands,  the  French  had  thrown  away  the 
trump-card  in  the  diplomatic  struggle  by  evacuating  Prussia’s 
Rhenish  provinces  without  handing  them  over  to  Austria.  It 
was  a  step  of  which  Maria  Theresa  had  good  right  to  complain, 
for  the  advantages  which  the  Allies  had  won  were  thus 
sacrificed  without  any  equivalent.  About  the  same  time  that 
preliminaries  were  signed  at  Fontainebleau  between  England 
and  the  Bourbon  Powers,  negotiations  were  opened  between 
Austria  and  Prussia  through  the  channel  of  Augustus  III,  the 
King  of  Poland  being  empowered  to  take  advantage  of 
Austria’s  pacific  dispositions  to  get  such  terms  as  he  could 
for  his  distressed  Electorate.  Under  this  cloak,  Austrian 
dignity  was  to  some  extent  spared  the  humiliation  involved  in 
the  evacuation  of  Glatz,  on  which  Frederick  absolutely  insisted. 
Finally,  after  long  negotiations  the  Peace  of  Hubertsberg 
(Feb.  15th,  1763)  restored  the  arrangements  of  the 

19 


290  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1763 


Berlin  Treaty  of  1745.  Saxony  recovered  her  lost  territories, 
but  Maria  Theresa’s  efforts  to  regain  Silesia  had  proved 
altogether  unsuccessful.  The  only  concession  that  could  be 
extorted  from  Frederick  was  a  promise  of  the  Brandenburg 
vote  at  the  election  of  a  King  of  the  Romans  to  Maria 
Theresa’s  eldest  son,  Joseph. 

Thus  in  the  end  Prussia  emerged  without  any  territorial 
loss  from  a  war  in  which  with  better  management  the  Austrian 
schemes  against  her  might  have  easily  been  brought  to  a 
successful  conclusion,  a  war  in  which  the  star  of  the 
Hohenzollern  monarchy  had  seemed  on  several  occasions  to 
be  about  to  be  permanently  eclipsed ;  the  great  struggle 
left  her  exhausted  and  heavily  burdened  indeed,  but  with  the 
prestige  of  having  beaten  off  the  attacks  of  an  apparently 
invincible  coalition.  The  credit  for  this  result  belongs  very 
largely  to  Frederick  himself.  His  only  right  to  the  possession 
of  Silesia  lay  in  his  power  to  take  and  to  keep  it  ;  but  in 
enforcing  the  doctrine  that  might  is  right  he  had  displayed  a 
vigour,  a  tenacity,  a  courage  in  the  most  desperate  extremities, 
which  go  far  towards  redeeming  his  case.  If  he  could  not 
plead,  as  Maria  Theresa  had  been  able  to  plead  in  1741,  that 
he  was  being  attacked  without  just  cause,  he  could  at  least 
claim  the  sympathy  that  naturally  attaches  to  the  weaker 
side,  even  though  had  he  succumbed  in  the  struggle  he  would 
have  only  had  himself  to  thank  for  having  originally  provoked 
the  contest.  If  his  strategy  and  tactics  were  by  no  means 
free  from  serious  error,  and  if  he  owed  his  escape  very  largely 
to  the  deficiencies  of  his  enemies  ;  their  errors,  their  slowness, 
their  hesitation,  their  failure  to  bring  on  the  pitched  battles 
by  which  alone  the  contest  could  be  decided,  only  serve  to 
show  up  in  favourable  light  the  opposite  qualities  of  resolution, 
promptitude  and  vigour  which  marked  the  operations  of 
Frederick.  One  man  alone  upon  the  Austrian  side  can  be 
put  upon  a  level  with  the  Prussian  King,  and  Loudoun  never 
.  had  the  opportunity  to  give  full  scope  to  the  talents  which  he 
was  able  to  show  that  he  possessed.  He  almost  alone  among 
the  opponents  of  Frederick  seems  to  have  realised  that  a 
vigorous  offensive  would  reduce  the  Prussian  monarch  to  his  last 
gasp  far  sooner  than  all  the  out- manoeuvring  in  the  world  ; 
that  a  policy  of  attrition  by  pitched  battles  was  the  true 
strategy ;  that  the  Allies  could  better  afford  to  lose  men  or 


1 763] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  III 


291 


battles  than  Frederick  could.  Time  after  time  Frederick  was 
allowed  to  recover  from  blows  which  if  promptly  followed  up 
must  have  been  fatal.  Moreover,  Frederick  was  better  served 
by  his  allies  than  was  Maria  Theresa  by  hers.  If  Daun 
deserves  to  be  called  slow  and  unenterprising,  what  is  to  be 
said  of  Apraxin  and  Fermor  ?  Soltikov  too,  if  an  improve¬ 
ment  on  his  predecessors,  was  quite  as  much  to  blame  as 
Daun  for  the  failure  of  the  Allies’  plans.  Nevertheless,  despite 
the  inefficiency  of  her  generals,  Russia  did  actually  play  the 
deciding  part  in  the  war.  Elizabeth’s  death  was  without 
question  the  decisive  event  of  the  long  struggle :  had  she 
lived  Frederick,  if  deprived  of  England’s  subsidy,  could  hardly 
have  survived  the  campaign  of  1762.  As  it  was,  Peter’s  short 
reign  was  just  long  enough  for  him  to  save  Frederick,  if  in 
so  doing  he  brought  about  his  own  fall.  The  part  of  France  in 
the  continental  war  was  inglorious  and  ineffectual.  Her  armies 
received  check  after  check  from  the  altogether  inferior  forces 
of  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick,  whose  reputation  was  as  much 
enhanced  by  the  war  as  that  of  Foudoun  himself.  Not  one 
of  her  generals  rose  above  mediocrity,  most  fell  much  below 
that  level.  Richelieu  failed  to  pursue  the  advantages  won  in 
the  only  pitched  battle  of  the  war  which  resulted  in  a  French 
success,  but  he  did  just  enough  to  show  the  vast  importance 
to  Frederick  of  the  work  of  the  Anglo-Hanoverian  army  of 
Western  Germany.  In  bringing  that  force  together,  maintain¬ 
ing  it  in  the  field,  paying  and  supplying  it,  England,  though 
at  the  same  time  achieving  ends  of  her  own,  did  Frederick 
a  service  of  incalculable  value.  The  rancour  with  which 
Frederick  regarded  his  former  ally  and  paymaster  may  be 
taken  as  some  measure  of  the  importance  to  him  of  Bute’s 
departure  from  the  policy  of  Pitt.1  Indeed,  paradoxical  and 
somewhat  exaggerated  as  the  statement  may  sound,  it  may 
almost  be  said  that  it  was  France  which  saved  Frederick  by 

1  The  question  of  Bute’s  policy  towards  Frederick  belongs  rather  to  the  English 
side  of  the  Seven  Years’  War.  For  refusing  to  continue  the  subsidy  Bute  had  a  fair 
case,  especially  in  view  of  the  intervention  of  Spain,  and  after  the  death  of  the 
Czarina  Frederick  was  no  longer  in  danger.  But  Frederick  had  some  reason  for  his 
belief  that  Bute  had  meant  to  leave  him  in  the  lurch,  and  in  the  course  of  the  Anglo- 
French  negotiations  the  relations  between  England  and  Prussia  became  greatly 
strained.  In  the  end,  however,  it  was  England  which  secured  the  restoration  to 
Frederick  of  his  Westphalian  territories,  and  such  cause  for  complaint  as  Frederick 
had  was  rather  against  the  manner  in  which  Bute  had  conducted  his  measures  than 
against  his  actual  actions. 


292  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1763 


taking  an  active  part  in  the  coalition  against  him.  It  was 
because  France  was  attacking  Hanover  that  England  had  to 
take  active  steps  on  behalf  of  Frederick.  Had  Hanover  been 
neutralised  and  the  French  share  in  the  war  confined  to  the 
fulfilment  of  the  obligations  contracted  in  1756,  it  is  not 
likely  that  a  single  English  soldier  would  have  set  foot  on 
German  soil,  or  that  English  money  would  have  found  its  way 
into  Frederick’s  coffers. 

But  if  Frederick  must  be  considered  fortunate  in  having 
weathered  the  storms  of  the  Third  Silesian  War,  his  prestige 
and  the  whole  position  of  Prussia  not  only  in  Germany  but  in 
Europe  were  enormously  enhanced  by  the  result.  If  Prussia 
was  still  second  to  Austria  in  Germany,  her  position  far  more 
nearly  approached  to  that  of  Austria  than  it  did  to  that  of 
Bavaria,  or  Hanover,  or  Saxony.  She  was  not  only  a  practi¬ 
cally  independent  state,  for  so  were  they  to  all  intents  and 
purposes,  but  she  was  a  factor  of  principal  importance  in  the 
affairs  of  Europe,  while  they  were  only  subordinates,  accessories, 
minor  members  of  alliances.  Austria’s  position  in  Germany 
had  not  indeed  been  directly  assailed  by  Prussia.  Frederick 
had  not  sought  to  substitute  the  Hohenzollern  for  the 
Hapsburgs  as  the  leading  power  in  Germany.  It  can  hardly 
be  said  that  there  was  any  “  German  ”  side  to  his  policy.  He 
aimed  at  independent  political  existence.  In  his  relations 
with  the  minor  states  of  Germany  he  sought  at  the  most  to 
prevent  Austria  reviving  the  old  Imperial  forms  with  which 
she  was  still  invested.  It  may  be  argued  that  in  a  way  he 
was  fighting  the  battle  of  the  German  Princes,  inasmuch  as 
success  in  the  humiliation  and  partition  of  Prussia  would  have 
altogether  altered  the  footing  on  which  Austria  stood  in 
relation  to  the  other  members  of  the  Empire ;  but  even  so  to 
fight  for  the  independence  of  the  German  Princes  was  not 
to  fight  for  Germany  or  for  German  nationality.  On  the 
contrary,  it  still  further  increased,  if  possible,  the  disunion  of 
Germany  and  the  decay  of  the  Empire.  To  a  certain  extent, 
no  doubt,  German  sentiment  rejoiced  in  the  defeat  of  the 
French  at  Rossbach.  That  rejoicing,  however,  was  mainly  due 
to  the  misconduct  of  the  French,  whose  indiscipline,  exemplified 
in  rapacity  and  marauding,  made  them  hateful  to  the  inhabit¬ 
ants  of  the  countries  they  visited.  There  were  no  such 
rejoicings  over  Leuthen  or  Torgau.  The  re-establishment  of 


1763] 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS’  WAR,  III 


293 


Austrian  rule  in  Silesia  was  not  unpopular,  nor  did  the 
Silesian  peasantry  indulge  in  guerilla  warfare  against  the 
Austrians.  The  Prussian  plundering  incursions  into  Thuringia 
and  other  parts  of  the  Empire  roused  the  bitterest  resentment 
and  dislike,  and  if  the  army  of  the  Empire  failed  to  do  any 
damage  to  the  Prussian  cause,  it  is  not  necessary  to  attribute 
that  to  goodwill  towards  Frederick.  The  Wurtemberg 
contingent  in  the  Austrian  army  in  1757  was  notorious  for 
the  desertions  from  its  ranks,  but  they  deserted  to  avoid  taking 
part  in  a  war  about  which  they  did  not  care,  not  because  they 
saw  in  Frederick  the  champion  of  oppressed  German  nation¬ 
ality.  Desertion  was  rife  in  both  armies,  and  was  hardly  ever, 
except  in  the  case  of  the  Saxons  forcibly  drafted  into  the 
Prussian  ranks,1  sentimental  or  political.  It  was  always 
practical,  due  to  want  of  food,  to  want  of  pay,  to  hardships 
of  one  sort  or  other.  The  only  real  effect  of  the  war  on 
Germany  was  to  complete  the  utter  disintegration  of  the 
German  kingdom  which  had  suffered  so  much  through  its 
association  with  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  Germany  was  yet 
to  drain  the  cup  of  humiliation  to  the  dregs  ;  but  that  Germany 
was  trampled  under  foot  by  the  Corsican  upstart  until  at  last 
her  sufferings  aroused  the  slumbering  sense  of  German  nation¬ 
ality  and  German  unity,  was  in  no  small  measure  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  Silesian  wars  had  destroyed  all  possibility  of  the 
Hapsburg  House  reuniting  Germany  under  its  leadership  or 
breathing  new  life  into  the  moribund  fabric  of  the  Empire,  and 
that  the  Revolution  found  her  a  mere  geographical  expression, 
no  less  devoid  of  unity  than  Italy  itself. 

1  Cf.  p.  199,  footnote. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


AUSTRIA  AND  PRUSSIA  AFTER  THE  WAR 
AND  THE  PARTITION  OF  POLAND 

ON  the  restoration  of  peace  the  first  object  to  which 
Frederick  turned  was  the  repairing  of  the  ravages 
of  the  war.  It  was  no  light  task.  Not  only  had  the 
provinces  which  had  been  the  theatre  of  war  been  plundered 
and  swept  bare  by  the  contending  armies,  but  even  the 
districts  which  had  escaped  the  presence  of  the  belligerents 
had  been  drained  dry  of  men  and  money  to  enable  the 
King  to  prosecute  the  struggle.  Frederick  promptly  dis¬ 
missed  some  30,000  of  his  troops,  sending  them  back  to 
till  the  fields  ;  he  disposed  of  his  cavalry  and  artillery  horses 
to  the  farmers ;  the  war-chest  which  had  been  replenished  by 
great  efforts  for  the  campaign  he  had  not  had  to  fight  disgorged 
its  contents,  which  were  sparingly  and  prudently  distributed  to 
relieve  the  most  pressing  needs.  The  war  had,  of  course,  been 
paid  for  in  large  part  by  the  contributions  exacted  from  countries 
he  had  overrun,  above  all  from  the  luckless  Saxony,  by  the 
large  subsidies  from  England,  by  depreciating  the  coinage, 
which  was  now  redeemed  at  only  one-fifth  of  its  face  value, 
and  by  withholding  their  salaries  from  the  civil  servants  of 
the  state.  They  had  been  paid  in  promissory  notes,  which 
Frederick  now  proceeded  to  pay  off  in  the  depreciated  currency 
at  its  nominal  not  its  real  value.  It  was  a  characteristic  act, 
a  gross  piece  of  injustice  which  meant  ruin  to  a  good  many 
overworked  and  underpaid  officials,  but  a  successful  stroke,  for 
it  materially  reduced  the  claims  upon  the  Prussian  exchequer. 

The  measures  which  Frederick  took  at  this  time  to  promote 
agriculture  and  industry,  to  attract  colonists  to  the  depopulated 
provinces,  to  increase  home  products  and  make  Prussia  inde¬ 
pendent  of  foreign  countries,  especially  of  Polish  corn,  do  not 
differ  in  kind  from  the  similar  steps  taken  by  his  father.1 

Cf.  Chapter  V. 


1763-74] 


AFTER  THE  WAR 


295 


Roads,  bridges,  canals  and  other  public  works  were  under¬ 
taken.  Extensive  reclamations  of  waste  and  swampy  lands 
added  nearly  1500  square  miles  to  the  cultivatable  area  of 
the  kingdom.  A  rigid  policy  of  protection  unsparingly  en¬ 
forced  did  much  to  establish  in  Prussia  industries  hitherto 
unknown.  The  production  and  manufacture  of  silk  and 
cotton  goods,  the  promotion  of  the  woollen  industry  by 
prohibiting  the  export  of  the  raw  material,  while  sheep 
farming  was  encouraged  by  the  introduction  of  Spanish 
sheep,  the  offer  of  bounties  to  attract  the  skilled  workmen 
of  other  countries  to  Prussia,  were  all  part  of  an  economic 
policy  based  on  the  principles  of  the  Mercantile  System  and 
enforced  with  a  thoroughness  few  other  monarchs  could  rival. 
Commerce  it  was  not  Frederick  Il’s  policy  to  foster.  In  his 
eyes  the  future  of  Prussia  was  not  on  the  sea ;  and  although 
Embden,  acquired  in  1744,  was  made  a  free  port  and  the 
tolls  on  the  Oder  were  lowered  for  the  benefit  of  Stettin, 
he  looked  rather  to  the  creation  of  a  self-centred,  self-sufficing 
State,  producing  a  large  revenue  and  capable  of  supporting 
a  large  army.  The  effect  of  his  economic  policy  on  the 
social  conditions  of  the  kingdom  served  to  accentuate  the 
spirit  of  militarism  he  did  so  much  to  foster.  Apart  from 
the  Ritterpferd  which  he  maintained 1  the  nobles  were  as  a 
class  exempt  from  taxation  ;  and  this  distinction  did  much 
to  perpetuate  class  barriers,  to  keep  down  the  townsfolk  and 
the  peasantry,  whom  Frederick  looked  upon  merely  as  tax 
and  recruit  producers,  and  to  prevent  them  from  uniting. 
Moreover,  the  political  condition  of  Prussia  assisted  to  repress 
the  tax-paying  classes.  Absolutism  had  been  made  the  guiding 
principle  by  Frederick  William  I ;  Frederick  II  did  not  in  the 
least  diminish  his  hold  on  power.  Not  even  the  nobles 
shared  to  any  extent  in  the  administration  of  the  country. 
It  was  in  the  hands  of  a  well-organised,  centralised  bureaucracy, 
efficient  but  unsympathetic.  Throughout  the  country,  from  the 
bailiffs  who  administered  the  Domains  through  the  Landr tithe, 
who,  like  the  Sheriffs  in  mediaeval  England,  kept  the  peace, 
attended  to  the  levy  of  contributions  and  acted  as  the  King’s 
agent  in  their  district,  and  the  tax  commissioners  who  were 
responsible  for  the  excise  and  the  police,  to  the  members  of 
the  General  Directory  itself,  all  the  officials  were  the  King’s 

1  In  1745  he  allowed  it  to  be  capitalised  and  redeemed. 


296  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1763-74 


servants,  owing  their  appointments  to  him,  responsible  to  him 
alone.  The  defects  of  the  system  were  not,  of  course,  apparent, 
whilst  the  man  on  whom  the  supreme  direction  of  affairs 
devolved  was  as  resolute,  as  vigorous  and  as  efficient  as 
Frederick,  but  the  burden  he  could  bear  was  too  much  for 
a  less  capable  successor.  His  ministers,  depending  entirely 
on  him  and  accustomed  to  look  to  him  for  orders  rather 
than  decide  even  minor  points  on  their  own  responsibility, 
were  clerks  and  subordinates  rather  than  administrators,  and 
the  removal  of  his  guiding  hand  was  followed  by  the  break¬ 
down  of  the  system  he  had  inherited  from  his  father  and 
had  handed  on  unchanged  in  the  main  though  improved  in 
details.  He  had  been  vigilant  and  strong  enough  to  check 
corruption  and  peculation,  but  those  inherent  defects  of  an 
over-centralised  and  underpaid  bureaucracy  proved  too  much 
for  an  inefficient  wielder  of  the  central  power. 

In  the  organisation  established  in  1723  Frederick  II  did 
not  make  many  changes.  The  Directory,  originally  organised 
in  four  departments  on  a  territorial  basis,  was  increased  by 
separate  departments  for  trade  and  manufactures  and  for 
military  affairs.  The  Provincial  Chambers  formed  the  links 
between  the  Directory  and  the  local  Landrathe  and  tax 
commissioners.  Foreign  affairs  were  entrusted  to  an  al¬ 
together  separate  department,  including  usually  two  or 
three  ministers,  one  of  whom  was  of  special  importance, 
and  may  be  looked  upon  as  the  chief.  Similarly  the  War 
Council  ( Geheime  Kriegs  Rath)  was  quite  a  distinct  body. 
In  the  reform  of  justice  and  the  judicial  system,  Frederick 
did  rather  more.  Aided  by  von  Cocceji,  head  of  the 
Department  of  Justice  since  1738,  he  sought  to  grapple 
with  the  expenses  and  delays  of  litigation,  the  collusion  and 
corruption  of  solicitors  and  assessors,  and  the  overcrowded 
state  of  the  judicial  bench.  In  1746  the  control  over  justice, 
hitherto  exercised  by  the  Directory,  was  transferred  to  the 
special  legal  Department.  Procedure  was  abridged  to 
expedite  litigation.  The  number  of  the  judges  was  reduced, 
and  good  jurists  appointed  at  adequate  salaries.  Arrears 
of  work  were  systematically  tackled  by  Cocceji,  province  by 
province,  and  were  cleared  off.  The  Common  Law  was 
codified,  and  the  confusion  arising  from  the  mixture  of 
Roman,  Teutonic,  and  barbarian  laws  materially  reduced, 


1 7^3-74] 


AFTER  THE  WAR 


297 


the  new  code  being  based  on  Roman  law,  but  modified  to 
suit  the  social  system  of  Prussia.  Subordinated  to  the 
Department  of  Justice  was  the  Consistorium ,  a  body  which 
looked  after  education  and  religious  affairs ;  but  Frederick, 
himself  practically  a  Free  Thinker,  was  not  the  kind  of  man 
to  pay  overmuch  attention  to  the  latter  subject.  The  only 
important  step  he  took  in  this  respect  was  the  establish¬ 
ment  of  religious  toleration  for  practically  all  creeds,  the 
Jews  alone  being  still  subjected  to  very  considerable  restric¬ 
tions. 

Frederick’s  system  was  one  which  bore  heavily  on  most 
classes  of  his  subjects.  Taxation  was  heavy,  and  the  partial 
exemption  enjoyed  by  the  nobles  therefore  all  the  more 
emphasised  their  position  as  a  separate  caste  marked  off 
from  the  rest  of  the  nation  by  social  and  fiscal  privileges. 
The  lot  of  the  peasantry  was  far  from  easy.  If  not  exactly 
slaves,  they  were  certainly  not  free,  being  ascripti  glebce 
and  as  such  liable  to  change  masters  with  the  estates  to 
which  they  belonged.  Not  only  had  they  to  pay  a  quite 
disproportionate  share  of  the  taxes,  but  it  was  from  them 
that  the  recruits  were  drawn  under  the  cantonment  system. 
They  had  to  spend  much  of  their  time  working  for  their 
lords,  to  hand  over  to  them  a  large  part  of  the  produce 
of  their  labour,  and  to  perform  personal  and  menial  services. 
Nor  was  it,  as  a  rule,  possible  for  a  peasant  to  better  his 
station  in  life.  Frederick,  while  realising  to  some  extent 
the  evils  of  the  situation,  refrained  from  making  any  attempt 
to  alter  them,  for  fear  apparently  of  in  any  way  subverting 
the  rigid  discipline  on  which  the  Prussian  state  was  based. 

This  rigid  discipline  was  felt  as  much  by  civilian  officials 
as  by  soldiers.  The  Civil  Service  was  so  harshly  and  vigorously 
treated  that  it  was  not  wonderful  that  it  was  not  popular. 
The  absolutism  of  the  King  and  the  cramping  fetters  of 
official  routine  left  no  scope  for  the  development  of  in¬ 
dividual  initiative  and  efficiency.  The  machine  of  the 
Prussian  administration  happened  to  be  efficient  under 
Frederick  II,  but  the  efficiency  was  due  to  external  impulses 
and  not  to  any  inherent  quality.  Lacking  in  organic  vitality, 
it  derived  its  efficiency  from  the  King’s  vigilant  and  inspiring 
personality ;  left  to  itself  it  was  bound  to  perish  under  the 
weight  of  its  own  routine.  It  has  been  well  described  as 


298  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1763-74 


“  an  organised  bureaucracy  with  a  numerous  personnel,  with 
roots  and  branches  shooting  in  every  direction,  with  a  code 
of  procedure  that  provided  for  nearly  every  problem  that 
might  arise  and  a  system  of  discipline  that  kept  all  the 
parts  in  a  state  of  harmonious  subjection.'5  Yet  with  all 
these  good  qualities  it  was  a  mere  machine,  it  needed  a 
master  hand  to  guide  it. 

Not  dissimilar  were  the  conditions  which  prevailed  in  the 
Army.  Here  again  there  was  a  rigidly  enforced  uniformity,  a 
highly  organised  administration,  a  system  which,  in  the  thirty 
years  of  peace  that  intervened  before  it  was  again  engaged 
in  any  serious  war,  was  allowed  to  become  the  end  in  itself 
and  not  the  means.  The  parade-ground  was  allowed  to 
obscure  the  battlefield,  and  when  Lord  Cornwallis  visited 
the  Prussian  manoeuvres  in  1785  he  found  that  the  practical 
had  been  sacrificed  to  a  precision  carried  to  the  verge  of 
pedantry.1  The  deep  gulf  fixed  between  officers  and  men 
might  help  to  make  the  maintenance  of  due  subordination 
more  easy,  but  it  was  detrimental  to  true  cohesion,  and  the 
savage  discipline  needed  to  keep  in  proper  subjection  an  army 
mainly  composed  of  foreign  mercenaries  to  a  certain  extent 
defeated  its  own  ends.  Worst  of  all  was  the  fact  that  so 
large  a  proportion  of  the  men  were  not  subjects  of  the  King 
they  served.  This  made  the  Army  non-national ;  and  though 
Frederick  II,  who  had  the  gift  of  leadership  and  of  getting 
the  last  ounce  of  work  out  of  all  his  subordinates,  Ministers 
of  State  and  privates  of  foot  alike,  did  manage  to  keep  his 
men  together  by  a  belief  in  him  and  by  the  glamour  of  his 
reputation,  his  successors  had  no  such  qualities.  But  after 
1763  the  Prussian  army  was  resting  on  its  well-earned 
laurels.  There  was  no  other  army  on  the  Continent  which 
could  compare  with  it,  and  the  defects  which  were  to  prove 
fatal  to  it  in  1792  and  1806  had  yet  to  develope  to  their 
full  extent. 

Like  her  enemy  Frederick,  Maria  Theresa  was  also 
engaged  on  the  task  of  reconstruction.  She  had  failed  in 
the  purpose  she  had  set  before  her,  she  had  been  forced  to 
leave  Silesia  in  Prussian  hands  and  to  acquiesce  in  the 
failure  of  the  plans  so  carefully  laid  and  matured.  Yet  in 

some  respects  Austria’s  position  in  1763  was  not  as  bad 
1  Cf.  his  letter  to  Colonel  Ross,  Cornwallis  Correspondence ,  i.  212. 


1  763-74] 


AFTER  THE  WAR 


299 


as  might  have  been  expected.  The  war  had  cost  her  dear 
in  men  and  in  money,  but  a  large  part  of  the  expense  had 
been  defrayed  by  the  French  subsidies,  and  since  the  abortive 
invasion  of  Moravia  in  1758  the  Austrian  territories  had 
escaped  being  the  theatre  of  war.  Her  provinces  were  there¬ 
fore,  at  any  rate  when  compared  with  the  miserable  condition 
of  Saxony,  East  Prussia,  Silesia  and  Westphalia,  in  a  fairly 
flourishing  state,  and  when  once  the  excessive  burdens 
imposed  during  the  war  were  removed  their  condition 
improved  rapidly. 

But  the  war  had  been  a  severe  trial  to  the  civil  and 
military  organisation  of  Austria,  and  in  several  directions 
further  changes  in  the  system  remodelled  by  Haugwitz  were 
shown  to  be  necessary.  Of  these  the  most  important  was 
the  establishment  (1758),  at  the  suggestion  of  Kaunitz,  of  a 
Council  of  State  to  advise  the  sovereign,  and  so  secure  a 
more  efficient  supervision  of  the  whole  administration  than 
the  Directory  had  so  far  provided.  This  Council  was  to 
be  composed  of  leading  men  of  great  experience  and  influence 
in  the  state  rather  than  merely  of  the  heads  of  the  various 
departments  of  the  government,  though  the  Chancellor  was 
to  be  a  member  ex  officio.  It  was  to  advise  and  supervise, 
not  to  execute,  and  foreign  and  military  affairs  did  not  come 
within  its  province,  while  the  non-German  provinces  were  not 
subjected  to  it.1  Haugwitz,  whom  Chotek  succeeded  as  Court 
Chancellor  ( Obersthofkanzler ),  and  Count  Henry  Bliimegen, 
afterwards  to  be  one  of  Joseph  Il’s  principal  subordinates, 
were  the  chief  members  of  the  new  Council,  and  the  young 
Archduke  Joseph  was  constantly  present  at  its  discussions. 

Soon  after  the  Peace  of  Hubertsburg  the  election  of 
Joseph  as  King  of  the  Romans,  defeated  on  a  former  occasion 
by  Prussian  opposition,  was  brought  to  a  successful  con¬ 
clusion.  Frederick  was  pledged  to  vote  for  Joseph  by  the 
terms  of  the  Peace,  Hanover  had  all  along  favoured  his 
election,  the  ecclesiastical  Electors  could  easily  be  secured 
by  a  small  outlay,  and  Saxony  was  the  close  ally  of  Austria. 
Any  opposition  that  Bavaria  or  the  Palatinate  felt  inclined 
to  offer  was  removed  by  various  promises  and  slight  conces¬ 
sions,  and  the  election  was  unanimous. 

Despite  the  disappointment  of  the  high  hopes  Maria 

1  Wolf,  p.  96. 


300  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1763-74 


Theresa  had  based  upon  the  new  alliance  with  the  House 
of  Bourbon,  it  was  now  one  of  her  principal  objects  to 
maintain  that  alliance,  and  if  possible  to  draw  it  closer  by 
a  series  of  marriages  between  members  of  the  Bourbon  and 
the  Hapsburg  families.  Thus  Joseph  had  married  Isabella 
of  Parma,  and  on  her  death  at  the  early  age  of  twenty-one, 
in  November  1763,  it  was  suggested  that  he  should  marry 
another  Princess  of  the  same  family,  while  three  of  the 
Archduchesses  were  married  to  Bourbon  Princes,  Caroline  to 
Ferdinand  of  Naples  in  April  1768,  Amelia  to  Ferdinand 
of  Parma  in  1769,  Marie  Antoinette  to  the  Dauphin,  after¬ 
wards  Louis  XVI  of  France,  in  1770.  Even  more  political 
importance  attached  to  the  marriage  of  the  Archduke 
Leopold,  the  second  surviving  son  of  the  Empress,  to  the 
Infanta  Louise,  daughter  of  Charles  ill  of  Spain,  as  it  was 
agreed  that  the  Emperor  should  hand  over  to  Leopold  the 
Duchy  of  Tuscany,  all  claims  on  which  Joseph  resigned. 
The  wedding  had  only  just  been  celebrated  at  Innsbruck 
when,  on  August  1 8th,  1765,  the  Emperor  was  suddenly 
smitten  by  an  apoplectic  seizure  and  died.  Francis  Stephen 
of  Lorraine  is  a  man  who  plays  a  prominent  part  in  history 
through  the  accident  of  his  marriage  to  Maria  Theresa  rather 
than  by  reason  of  his  own  very  mediocre  capacities.  Neither 
as  a  statesman  nor  as  a  general  did  he  distinguish  himself, 
and  Maria  Theresa’s  excessive  grief  and  extravagant  praise 
of  his  virtues  cannot  hide  the  fact  that  he  had  never  been 
in  himself  a  person  of  much  weight.  The  Empress  seems 
for  a  time  to  have  contemplated  retiring  into  a  convent  and 
handing  all  power  over  to  her  son,  who  styled  himself 
Emperor  from  the  moment  of  his  father’s  death,  and  whom 
she  now  took  into  partnership  with  her  as  joint  ruler 
(Dec.  1765).  But  this  idea  did  not  last  long,  and  Maria 
Theresa  soon  again  assumed  the  reins  of  government, 
though  sharing  her  power  with  her  son  and  to  a  great  extent 
with  Kaunitz.  Seeing  how  completely  Joseph’s  views  on 
most  questions  of  importance  differed  from  his  mother’s,  she 
conservative,  religious  to  the  verge  of  bigotry,  aristocratic  in 
sentiment,  well  versed  in  affairs  and  well  acquainted  with 
men,  he  an  ardent  reformer,  tolerant  and  broad-minded, 
almost  indifferent  in  religious  matters,  a  tactless  doctrinaire 
unable  to  distinguish  the  practical  from  the  unwise,  it  is 


1763-74] 


AFTER  THE  WAR 


301 


much  to  his  credit  that  they  should  have  worked  together 
as  smoothly  as  they  did  and  should  have  got  on  so  well. 
Causes  of  friction  were  frequent,  several  big  differences 
occurred,  but  Joseph  always  preferred  to  give  way  to  his 
mother’s  opinion  rather  than  cause  a  deadlock  by  persisting 
in  his  own,  even  when  thoroughly  convinced  of  its  justice. 
Kaunitz,  too,  had  a  difficult  task.  The  strongest  ties  of 
regard,  affection  and  gratitude  bound  him  to  the  mistress 
he  had  served  so  faithfully  and  by  whom  he  had  always 
been  implicitly  trusted.  To  have  to  intervene  as  a  third 
party  between  the  Empress  and  her  son,  especially  as  on 
many  matters  he  agreed  with  Joseph,  was  no  pleasant  task, 
but  on  the  whole  he  came  out  of  the  ordeal  with  great 
success. 

Joseph  was  not  slow  about  setting  out  on  a  career  of 
reforms.  He  cut  down  the  establishment,  the  ceremonial 
and  the  expenses  of  the  Court,  gave  up  the  vast  hunting 
establishment  left  by  his  father,  turned  the  Prater  into  a 
public  park,  devoted  the  private  fortune  bequeathed  to  him 
by  his  father  to  assist  in  the  conversion  of  the  debt  and  the 
reduction  of  the  interest  from  five  to  four  per  cent.  Such 
were  the  economies  he  effected  that  by  1775  the  revenue 
not  only  balanced  the  expenses,  but  there  was  actually  a 
surplus  of  five  and  a  half  million  gulden,  a  condition  of  affairs 
almost  unprecedented  in  Austria. 

In  the  ranks  of  the  Ministers  several  changes  occurred 
about  this  time.  Haugwitz  had  died  in  1765,  Chotek,  his 
successor  as  Hofkanzler ,  in  1771,  on  which  Hatzfeldt  became 
the  minister  next  in  importance  to  Kaunitz.  Kolowrat  suc¬ 
ceeded  Hatzfeldt  at  the  Treasury;  and  when,  in  the  hope  of 
securing  unity  in  the  administration,  Hatzfeldt  was  made 
President  of  the  Council  of  State,  the  post  of  Hofkanzlei '  was 
given  to  Henry  Bliimegen.  In  the  reform  of  the  army,  Joseph 
was  keenly  interested.  Daun  had  already  in  1762  replaced 
Joseph  Harrach  at  the  head  of  the  War  Council,  and  did 
good  service  till  his  death  in  1765.  Joseph  thereupon 
appointed  Lacy  to  the  vacant  post,  thereby  passing  over 
some  thirty  other  officers,  among  them  Loudoun,  certainly 
Lacy’s  superior  on  the  field  of  battle.  But  administration 
was  Lacy’s  province,  and  he  did  excellent  work  in  improving 
the  organisation,  drill  and  equipment  of  the  army,  establishing 


302  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1763-74 


a  definite  General  Staff,  attending  to  fortifications  and  bringing 
the  Supply  Department  properly  under  the  control  of  the  War 
Council.  These  reforms  were  of  the  greatest  benefit  to  the 
army,  but  they  led  to  collisions  with  the  civil  authorities  and 
even  with  the  Emperor,  and  in  1774  Lacy  retired,  being 
replaced  by  Andreas  Hadik. 

But  while  doing  all  this  as  head  of  the  Hapsburg  dominions, 
Joseph  was  at  heart  even  more  anxious  to  revive  the  Empire 
and  to  galvanise  it  into  fresh  life.  The  task  was  an  all  but 
hopeless  one,  but  it  does  seem  that  there  is  no  small  truth  in 
the  remark  that  “Joseph  was  a  Lorrainer,  not  a  Hapsburg.,, 
If  that  saying  implies  that  Joseph’s  great  desire  was  to  be  able 
to  restore  the  Empire  to  a  really  active  and  working  condition, 
it  is  probably  right.  A  study  of  his  foreign  policy  1  does  seem 
to  show  that  it  was  on  the  Upper  rather  than  on  the  Lower 
Danube  that  his  hopes  centred.  Bavaria  meant  more  to  him 
than  the  Balkans.  But  the  Aulic  Council  ( Reicl ishof rath )  was 
a  poor  weapon  with  which  to  effect  great  reforms,  and  the 
Imperial  Court  ( Hofgericht )  was  dilatory  and  negligent  and 
treated  its  office  as  a  mere  source  of  profit.  The  condition  of  the 
Reichskammergericht  at  Wetzlar  was  no  better.  Hopelessly  cor¬ 
rupt  and  inefficient,  it  had  let  cases  accumulate  till  in  1772  over 
60,000  were  waiting  to  be  decided:  one  case  in  particular  had 
been  going  on  for  a  hundred  and  eighty-eight  years.  Joseph 
ordered  a  Visitation  (May  1767),  the  first  since  1588,  but  it 
could  do  little  good.  It  was  not  of  much  use  to  dismiss 
indolent  and  corrupt  officials  when  the  root  of  the  matter 
lay  in  the  complete  collapse  of  the  Empire.  It  had  practically 
ceased  to  exist,  and  in  its  stead  were  numerous  small  states 
more  or  less  independent,  too  small  for  any  real  national  life 
of  their  own,  too  independent  to  allow  of  any  united  national 
life,  while  the  more  powerful  among  them  devoted  all  their 
energies  towards  self-aggrandisement  in  every  possible  way. 
It  may  be  argued  that  under  Joseph  II  Austria  was  just  as 
ready  to  grasp  at  any  scrap  of  territory  on  which  she  could 
lay  her  hands  as  was  any  other  Power.  The  accusation  is  in 
large  measure  true ;  but  in  seeking  to  increase  his  dominions 
in  Germany,  Joseph  was  acting  as  Emperor,  as  representative 
of  the  unity — such  as  it  was- — of  Germany,  not  merely  as 
the  head  of  his  family,  or  even  as  one  among  the  “great 

1  Cf.  Chapter  XV, 


1763-4] 


THE  PARTITION  OF  POLAND 


303 


Powers  ”  of  Europe.  He  was  striving  to  restore  reality  to  the 
historic  position  which  he  held. 

The  first  country  whose  affairs  claimed  the  attention  of 
Germany  after  the  close  of  the  Silesian  Wars  was  its  unhappy 
neighbour  on  the  East,  Poland.  In  October  1763,  Augustus  II 
of  Saxony-Poland  had  died.  Neither  as  the  enemy  nor 
as  the  ally  of  Austria  had  he  had  much  success.  His 
Electorate,  the  buffer  state  between  the  contending  forces  of 
the  Hapsburgs  and  the  Hohenzollern,  had  suffered  enormously 
in  the  wars :  his  Kingdom  had  served  as  the  base  for  the 
operations  of  the  Russians,  and  its  condition  was  but  little 
better.  His  death  was  probably  accelerated  by  the  disasters 
and  disappointments  he  had  gone  through,  and  it  was  followed 
in  December  by  that  of  his  successor,  Frederick  Christian. 
Thus,  not  only  was  the  Polish  throne  vacant,  but  the  Saxon 
House  was  unable  to  put  forward  a  candidate  for  the 
vacancy,  since  the  heir  to  Saxony,  Augustus,  son  of  Elector 
Frederick  Christian,  was  only  twelve  years  old.  Austria  now 
found  herself  in  an  awkward  situation.  She  strongly  approved 
of  the  presence  of  the  Saxon  dynasty  at  Warsaw,  since  her 
interests  were  best  served  when  the  Polish  throne  was  occupied 
by  a  Prince  independent  of  Russia  and  not  over  friendly  with 
Prussia.  Despite  the  alliance  with  France,  she  rather  dis- 
trusted  the  extraordinary  intrigues  by  which  Louis  XV  sought 
to  obtain  the  Polish  throne  for  the  Prince  de  Conti.  Still 
she  was  unable  to  find  a  suitable  candidate  to  oppose  to 
Stanislaus  Poniatowski,  the  Polish  nobleman  whom  Russia 
with  the  support  of  Prussia  now  put  forward.  Poniatowski’s 
candidature  was  not  altogether  popular  in  Poland.  The 
Czartoriski  family  with  which  he  was  connected  was  the  main 
strength  of  the  Russophil  faction,  and  the  opponents  of  this 
faction  would  probably  have  been  prepared  to  resist  his 
election  had  Austria  and  France  shown  themselves  ready  to 
support  such  resistance.  But  Maria  Theresa  had  had  enough 
of  war :  she  did  not  mean  to  appeal  to  arms  again  if  she  could 
help  it,  and  her  diplomacy  was  henceforward  greatly  hampered 
by  this  unwillingness  to  fight.  Austria  and  P'rance  accordingly 
had  to  content  themselves  with  the  empty  protest  of  with¬ 
drawing  their  representatives  from  Warsaw,  and  in  September 
1764,  Poniatowski  was  duly  elected.  His  election  was  really 
a  triumph  for  Russia,  for  Frederick  had  played  a  somewhat 


304  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1766-7 


subordinate  part,  and  the  overtures  he  before  long  made  to 
Austria  may  be  interpreted  as  a  recognition  of  the  dangers 
with  which  Germany  was  threatened  by  the  undue  aggrandise¬ 
ment  of  her  formidable  Eastern  neighbour.  It  was  clearly 
Russia’s  policy  to  absorb  Poland  if  she  could,  failing  that 
to  subject  the  Republic  completely  to  her  influence.  Neither 
of  these  courses  would  have  been  to  Frederick’s  liking,  since 
both  would  put  barriers  in  the  way  of  his  acquisition  of  the 
coveted  district  of  West  Prussia.  But  apart  from  this,  it  was 
certainly  not  to  his  advantage  or  to  Austria’s  that  Russia 
should  become  predominant  in  Poland.  Had  Austria  and 
Prussia  combined  to  set  the  Polish  constitution  on  a  rational 
basis  and  to  help  Poniatowski,  who  showed  himself  less 
amenable  to  Russian  authority  than  had  been  expected,  to 
assert  and  maintain  his  independence,  Poland  might  have  been 
made  an  efficient  “  buffer  state  ”  against  the  Russian  advance ; 
but  Silesia  barred  the  way  to  a  reconciliation  and  Frederick’s 
aims  were  to  be  attained  by  the  disintegration  of  Poland 
rather  than  by  its  revival.  Moreover,  Maria  Theresa’s  religious 
bigotry  caused  her  to  look  with  disfavour  on  the  proposal  to 
remove  the  disabilities  of  the  Dissidents,  one  of  the  main 
causes  of  Polish  disunion.  She  would  have  been  glad  to  unite 
with  France  to  guarantee  the  integrity  of  Poland,  but  she  dis¬ 
trusted  Frederick  too  much  to  co-operate  with  him  in  anything 
and  she  was  specially  anxious  to  prevent  him  gaining  any 
influence  over  Joseph,  who  was  already  somewhat  inclined  to 
hold  sceptical  and  cynical  views  of  political  and  religious  affairs. 

Meanwhile  the  troubles  of  Poland  culminated  in  conflicts 
between  the  adherents  of  the  Greek  Church  and  of  the 
Catholic  religion.  The  attempt  of  Stanislaus  to  abrogate 
the  Liberum  Veto  was  foiled  by  Russian  opposition  (Nov. 
1766),  and  in  the  following  year  the  Russophil  party  formed 
the  Confederation  of  Radom,  terrified  the  Diet  into  accepting 
certain  modifications  of  the  constitution  and  appointed 
Catherine  its  guardian.  In  reply,  the  Catholics,  led  by 
Marshall  Krasinski,  formed  the  Confederation  of  Bar.  Re¬ 
ligious  riots  on  a  large  scale  followed,  and  practically  the 
whole  country  was  plunged  into  civil  war.  Russian  troops 
intervened  on  behalf  of  their  partisans  and,  in  pursuing  some 
Polish  fugitives,  violated  the  frontier  of  Turkey.  France  had 
already  been  urging  the  Porte  to  send  assistance  to  the  Poles, 


1768-70]  THE  PARTITION  OF  POLAND 


305 


and  the  Turks  were  not  slow  to  declare  war  (Oct.  1768). 
One  important  result  was  that  Austria,  wishing  to  observe 
strict  neutrality,  guarded  her  frontier  with  a  strong  military 
cordon,  while  to  prevent  disputes  the  frontier  was  marked 
out  by  a  line  of  posts  bearing  the  Austrian  eagles.  The 
opportunity  was  taken  to  include  inside  these  limits  the 
district  of  Zips,  formerly  part  of  Hungary  which  had  been 
pledged  to  Lladislaus  Jagellon  by  the  Emperor  Sigismund. 
The  reoccupation  of  this  district,  geographically  part  of 
Hungary  since  it  took  Poland  over  the  Carpathians,  was  carried 
out  with  Stanislaus  Poniatowski’s  full  agreement ;  but  at  Joseph’s 
orders  the  line  of  demarcation  included  Sandez,  Neumarkt  and 
Csorsztyn,  which  were  also  claimed  as  part  of  Hungary. 

The  situation  called  forth  from  Kaunitz  a  characteristically 
ingenious  plan  for  the  recovery  of  Silesia.  An  alliance  was 
to  be  formed  between  Austria,  Prussia  and  Turkey  to  save 
Poland  and  check  the  Russian  advance.  Poland  was  to 
provide  the  “  satisfaction  ”  for  Prussia,  which  in  return  for 
her  good  offices  was  to  receive  Courland  and  West  Prussia 
but  to  surrender  Silesia  to  Austria,  while  Turkey  would  find 
her  share  of  the  benefits  of  the  alliance  in  getting  safely 
through  a  war  which  from  the  very  start  had  gone  ill  with 
her.  This  plan,  however,  was  too  revolutionary  and  too 
chimerical  to  commend  itself;  Maria  Theresa  and  even 
Joseph  hated  the  notion  of  any  alliance  with  Prussia.  Still, 
Kaunitz  saw  that  if  Austria  did  not  mean  to  give  actual 
support  to  Turkey,  and  of  this  there  was  no  intention,  the 
only  possible  course  was  joint  action  with  Prussia ;  and  as  the 
result  of  his  persistent  advocacy  of  this  course  there  occurred 
the  celebrated  interviews  between  Joseph  and  Frederick  at 
Neisse  in  August  1769  and  at  Neustadt  in  the  following  year. 
Frederick  used  all  the  arts  of  which  he  was  master  to  flatter 
and  cajole  the  young  Emperor,  whose  admiration  for  the  re¬ 
nowned  Prussian  King  was  far  from  being  to  the  liking  of 
Maria  Theresa.  No  immediate  results  followed,  however,  except 
that  Frederick  saw  he  need  not  fear  Austrian  opposition. 

Meanwhile  the  danger  of  war  was  increasing.  The  Russian 
successes  against  the  Turks  continued,  and  Austria  collected  a 
large  force  in  Hungary  ready  to  fall  on  the  communications  of 
the  Russians  should  they  advance  across  the  Danube.  In  July 
1771,  Thugut,  Austria’s  representative  at  Constantinople,  con- 


20 


306  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [ijjt 


eluded  a  convention  with  Turkey  by  which  Austria  undertook 
to  save  Turkey  from  a  peace  on  humiliating  terms.  In  return 
she  was  to  receive  Little  Wallachia  and  a  large  subsidy. 
Maria  Theresa  objected  strongly  to  the  transaction,  for  which 
Joseph  and  Kaunitz  were  really  responsible.  She  refused  to 
ratify  it,  feeling  that  it  compromised  Austria’s  dignity,  took 
an  unfair  advantage  of  a  Power  which  had  acted  most 
honourably  in  Austria’s  hour  of  need  in  1741,  and  also  fearing 
that  it  would  lead  to  war.  It  was  to  this  prospect  that 
Frederick  also  objected.  He  did  not  wish  to  be  involved  in  a 
war  against  Austria  and  Turkey  on  behalf  of  Russia,  nor  was 
he  anxious  to  see  Austria  and  Russia  arrive  at  an  understand¬ 
ing.  It  was  quite  a  possibility  that  Austria  might  induce 
Russia  to  content  herself  with  moderate  gains,  and  might 
obtain  these  concessions  from  Turkey,  and  that  then  Russia 
and  Austria  might  firmly  oppose  any  partition  of  Poland, 
thereby  preventing  Frederick  from  acquiring  the  much-coveted 
West  Prussia.  For  a  partition  was  the  expedient  by  which 
Frederick  sought  to  extricate  the  three  Powers  from  their 
dilemma.  It  would  hardly  be  profitable  to  follow  the  com¬ 
plicated  intrigues,  proposals  and  counter-projects  in  detail. 
The  idea  of  a  partition  was  not,  of  course,  new.  Maximilian  II 
in  1573,  Charles  X  of  Sweden  in  1657,  Alberoni,  even 
Augustus  II  of  Saxony  in  1733,  had  suggested  schemes  for  it; 
but  Frederick  and  his  brother  Prince  Henry  1  were  responsible 
for  bringing  it  forward  now.  Catherine  disliked  it  as  prevent¬ 
ing  her  from  absorbing  all  Poland ;  it  was  only  with  real  and 
sincere  reluctance  that  Maria  Theresa  at  last  listened  to  the 
urgent  advocacy  of  it  by  Kaunitz  and  Joseph.  Russia  had 
forborne  to  push  her  successes  across  the  Danube  for  fear  of 
Austrian  intervention  ;  she  was  ready  to  relinquish  Moldavia 
and  Wallachia  if  compensation  could  be  found  in  Poland. 
But  when  Austria  proposed  that  the  Czarina  should,  in  con¬ 
sideration  of  Austria’s  mediation  of  a  peace  between  her  and 
Turkey,  support  Austria  in  resisting  any  division  of  Poland, 
Catherine  declined  to  accept  the  proposal,  and  Kaunitz  found 
that  the  Czarina  and  Frederick  were  already  in  practical 
agreement,  and  that  they  had  no  intention  of  letting  go  those 
portions  of  Poland  which  they  had  resolved  to  annex.  It  would 
appear  that  this  had  been  settled  as  early  as  February  1771 
1  Cf.  Mirabeau,  Secret  History  of  the  Court  of  Berlin ,  i.  312. 


1772] 


THE  PARTITION  OF  POLAND 


307 


when  Prince  Henry  visited  Catherine.  In  November,  Frederick 
informed  van  Swieten,  the  Austrian  envoy  to  Berlin,  that 
Russia  intended  to  take  compensation  for  the  Danubian 
Principalities  at  the  expense  of  Poland.  In  December,  Austria 
learnt  definitely  that  Frederick  meant  to  annex  West  Prussia 
as  his  share.  The  only  problem,  since  it  was  out  of  the 
question  for  Austria  to  prevent  the  Partition,  as  Choiseul  had 
fallen  and  England  was  fully  occupied  across  the  Atlantic,  was 
whether  she  should  join  the  spoilers  or  mark  her  disapproval  of 
their  action  by  protests.  There  was  no  question  in  the  minds 
of  Joseph  and  Kaunitz.  Their  “  land  hunger”  was  almost 
worthy  of  a  Hohenzollern.  The  balance  of  power  must  be 
maintained  ;  Austria  could  not  afford  to  stand  aside  when  her 
neighbours  were  making  territorial  gains.  The  doctrine  of 
compensation  by  equivalents  was  a  specious  cloak  for  greed. 
Even  Maria  Theresa  would  have  raised  no  objection  to  the 
annexation  of  West  Prussia  if  Frederick  would  have  resigned 
Glatz  and  part  of  Silesia,  a  concession  he  refused  to  con¬ 
template.  To  sharing  in  the  Partition  she  was  strongly  opposed, 
and  indignantly  repudiated  the  charge  that  Austria  had  begun 
the  spoliation  of  Poland  by  the  occupation  of  Zips.  Super¬ 
ficially,  of  course,  this  would  seem  to  be  the  case,  but  there  was 
a  great  difference  between  the  reoccupation  of  a  small  piece 
of  territory,  Poland’s  right  to  which  was  certainly  disputable, 
and  wholesale  annexations  amounting  to  a  third  of  the  whole 
country.  At  the  same  time  it  was  unfortunate  that  the  pretext 
should  have  been  given  to  people  who  knew  how  to  use  it  as 
well  as  Frederick  and  Catherine  did. 

In  February  1772  the  Russian  Ambassador  definitely 
invited  Austria’s  co-operation  in  the  treaty  of  partition  arranged 
by  Frederick  and  Catherine,  intimating  that  Austria’s  action 
would  in  no  case  affect  the  resolve  of  these  two  contracting 
parties.  At  this  Maria  Theresa  yielded  with  the  greatest 
reluctance  and  unwillingness,  whereupon  it  was  discovered 
that  Galicia  had  formerly  been  part  of  Hungary,  and  a  formal 
claim  was  produced.  Kaunitz  as  usual  claimed  more  than  he 
dreamt  of  getting  in  order  not  to  get  less  than  he  hoped  ;  but 
Joseph,  taking  over  the  direction  of  the  affair,  marched  troops 
into  the  districts  he  meant  to  have,  and  thus  secured  what  he 
wanted.  On  August  2nd,  1772,  the  treaty  of  partition  was 
signed  at  St.  Petersburg,  and  on  September  26th  Austria 


308  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1773 


published  a  proclamation  annexing  Galicia.  Poland  was 
powerless  to  resist,  and  in  September  1773  bribery  coupled 
with  threats  of  violence  wrung  from  the  reluctant  Diet  its  con¬ 
sent  to  the  scheme.  Kaunitz  would  have  been  glad  to  take 
the  opportunity  to  make  certain  reforms  in  the  Polish  constitu¬ 
tion,  notably  the  abolition  of  the  Liberum  Veto ,  and  to  add  to 
the  Royal  revenues  by  secularising  certain  bishoprics  ;  but  these 
suggested  improvements  of  the  condition  of  the  Republic  were 
not  at  all  to  the  liking  of  Russia  and  Prussia,  and  though  in 
the  next  fifteen  years  a  certain  number  of  minor  reforms  were 
effected,  to  maintain  the  weakness  of  Poland  was  a  cardinal 
point  in  the  designs  of  Catherine  and  of  Frederick. 

Of  the  three  participators  in  this  high-handed  action,  Russia 
took  the  largest  share,  advancing  her  Western  frontier  to  the 
Dwina  and  Druck.  To  Austria  there  fell  Lemberg,  Relz  and 
parts  of  Cracow  and  Sandomir,  a  district  which  contained  valu¬ 
able  salt  mines.  Prussia,  which  contented  herself  with  Pomer- 
elia,  Marienburg  and  Ermeland,  with  the  larger  portions  of  the 
Palatinates  of  Kulm,  Posen  and  Gniezno,  obtained  the  territorial 
connection  with  East  Prussia  which  had  so  long  been  coveted 
by  the  Hohenzollern  ;  and  her  share,  if  the  smallest  in  area,  was 
of  far  more  advantage  to  her  than  was  Austria’s  to  Austria,  even 
if  the  all-important  Dantzic  still  remained  unabsorbed. 

The  Partition  of  Poland  is  an  action  which  it  is  much 
easier  to  condemn  in  the  strongest  terms  than  to  extenuate  in 
the  least.  It  is  the  typical  example  of  the  “  land  hunger,” 
which  so  dominated  the  rulers  of  Europe  in  the  18th  Century 
as  to  make  them  quite  impervious  to  the  dictates  of  common 
fairness.  It  is  an  action  quite  in  keeping  with  Frederick’s 
previous  career  ;  and  the  only  reason  why  Catherine’s  share  in 
it  excites  surprise  is  that  Russia  would  so  obviously  have  pre¬ 
ferred  to  keep  Poland  undivided  in  the  hope  of  wholesale 
annexation  ;  but  one  is  not  prepared  to  find  Maria  Theresa  in 
such  company  or  sharing  in  so  discreditable  an  action.  The 
truth  would  seem  to  be  that  Joseph  and  Kaunitz  between  them 
were  too  much  for  her. 

That  the  dismembered  provinces,  those  at  least  which  fell 
into  the  hands  of  Austria  and  Prussia,  profited  materially  by 
the  exchange,  hardly  affords  in  itself  a  sufficient  justification  for 
their  annexation.  Indeed,  it  rather  lends  force  to  the  argument 
that  by  stopping  short  of  a  complete  partition  the  three  Powers 


THE  PARTITION  OF  POLAND 


309 


i773j 

had  deprived  themselves  of  their  only  defence.  Had  they 
pleaded,  as  they  might  reasonably  have  pleaded,  that  the  con¬ 
dition  of  Poland  was  so  bad  that  partition  was  the  only 
remedy,  that  reform  was  out  of  the  question,  the  plea  might  be 
admitted,  but  the  admission  only  makes  the  partial  partition 
the  more  inexcusable.  A  complete  partition  would  have 
involved  conflicts  that  might  have  ended  in  war,  and  the 
partners  preferred  to  avoid  that. 

Joseph  proceeded  to  carry  his  point  as  to  the  administra¬ 
tion  of  his  new  province.  Galicia  was  treated  like  one  of  the 
regular  Austrian  provinces,  and  a  Chancery  was  established  for  it 
at  Vienna  instead  of  its  being  placed  directly  under  the  control 
of  the  State  Chancery  as  were  Lombardy  and  the  Netherlands, 
or,  as  the  Hungarians  desired,  incorporated  as  Zips  had  been 
in  Hungary.  In  1775  it  was  given  Estates  after  the  pattern 
of  the  German  provinces  ;  but  their  functions  were  to  advise 
rather  than  to  decide,  and  the  question  they  had  to  settle  was 
not  “  whether  ”  but  “  how  ”  taxes  should  be  raised.  On  the  whole, 
Austrian  rule  soon  became  fairly  popular,  though  the  nobles 
regretted  the  exemption  from  taxation  and  the  greater  licence 
to  please  themselves  which  they  had  enjoyed  under  Polish  rule. 

Meanwhile  one  result  of  Austria  and  Russia  agreeing  upon 
joint  action  in  Poland  had  been  to  avert  all  danger  of  a 
collision  between  them  on  the  Danube.  Russia  agreed  to 
restore  Moldavia  and  Wallachia  to  Turkey,  and  this  she  did 
when,  after  an  abortive  congress  at  Fokschau,  brought 
together  under  the  auspices  of  the  ministers  of  Austria  and 
Prussia  (August  1772),  had  failed  to  bring  about  peace, 
repeated  defeats  caused  Turkey  to  conclude  the  disastrous 
Peace  of  Kainardji  in  July  1774.  It  is  not  exactly  to 
Joseph’s  credit,  nor  to  that  of  Kaunitz  either,  that  Austria, 
pretending  that  she  had  fulfilled  her  share  of  the  1771 
compact  in  inducing  Russia  to  relinquish  the  Danubian 
Principalities,  retained  possession  of  the  Bukovina  district 1 
which  her  troops  had  occupied  at  the  time  of  the  Austro- 
Turkish  convention.  The  district  was  maintained  under 
military  rule  till  1786,  being  under  the  General  commanding 
at  Lemberg  subject  to  the  supervision  of  the  War  Council ; 
it  was  then  united  to  the  adjacent  province  of  Galicia. 

1  Northern  Moldavia,  formerly  part  of  Transylvania  but  lost  to  the  Turks  in  the 

15th  Century. 


CHAPTER  XV 


THE  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II 

THE  share  of  Austria  in  the  Partition  of  Poland  is  not 
least  interesting  as  affording  evidence  that  the  direction 
of  the  foreign  policy  of  the  Hapsburgs  was  passing  from  the 
hands  of  Maria  Theresa  to  those  of  her  ambitious  and 
energetic  son.  It  was  Joseph  whose  desire  for  territorial 
acquisitions  had  brought  Austria  into  line  with  the  holder 
of  Silesia,  Joseph  who  must  be  held  responsible  for  the 
unworthy  subterfuges  by  which  a  cloak  of  right  was  given  to 
the  retention  of  Bukovina,  an  action  which  was  a  poor  return 
for  Turkey’s  conduct  in  1741.  And  in  the  next  international 
incident  in  which  Austria  was  involved  it  was  again  Joseph 
who  was  the  principal  mover :  Maria  Theresa’s  part  was 
limited  to  that  of  a  commentator. 

If  there  was  any  district  in  Germany  upon  which  a 
Hapsburg  was  likely  to  look  with  covetous  eyes  it  was  the 
country  to  the  West  of  him,  not  very  much  farther  up  the 
Danube.  The  importance  of  Bavaria  to  Austria  is  one  of 
the  commonplaces  of  strategical  geography :  the  years  1703- 
1704  and  1741  — 1744  tell  their  own  tale.  Moreover,  to 
acquire  even  a  part  of  Bavaria  would  enormously  strengthen 
Austria’s  political  prestige  in  the  Empire,  enable  her  to 
exercise  a  far  greater  influence  in  Southern  Germany,  and 
afford  some  compensation  for  the  diminution  which  the 
German  element  in  the  Hapsburg  dominions  had  suffered  in 
the  loss  of  Silesia.  For  these  reasons,  if  for  no  others,  Joseph 
took  no  small  interest  in  the  succession  to  Maximilian 
Joseph,  the  childless  Elector  of  Bavaria.  As  to  the  immediate 
heir,  indeed,  there  was  no  doubt.  Charles  Theodore  of 
Sulzbach,  Elector  Palatine  since  1742,  was  the  next  re¬ 
presentative  of  the  common  ancestor  of  the  Bavarian  and 

310 


i  777]  THE  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II 


3” 

Palatinate  branches  of  the  House  of  Wittelsbach.1  But 
Charles  Theodore  was  also  without  legitimate  heirs ;  he  cared 
very  little  for  Bavaria ;  took  no  account  of  the  wishes  of  the 
Bavarians  or  of  his  heir  presumptive,  Charles  II  of  Zweibrticken- 
Birkenfeld,2  in  whose  hands  the  scattered  possessions  of  the 
Landsberg,  Kleeberg,  Zweibriicken  and  Bischweiler  branches 3 
had  become  united.  So  far  as  he  cared  for  anything  except 
the  gratification  of  his  own  pleasures,  Charles  Theodore  was 
interested  in  the  dominions  he  already  possessed  on  the  Rhine, 
and  was  especially  anxious  to  preserve  Jtilich  and  Berg  from 
falling  into  the  hands  of  Frederick  II  of  Prussia,  whom  he 
suspected  of  designs  upon  them.  It  was  not  very  difficult, 
therefore,  for  Joseph  to  come  to  an  agreement  with  him. 
Negotiations  for  an  Austrian  guarantee  of  Jiilich  and  Berg 
in  return  for  the  Elector’s  recognition  of  the  claims  on  Bavaria 
which  Austria  had  no  difficulty  in  finding  when  a  pretext  was 
wanted,  had  begun  in  1776  and  were  in  progress  when,  in 
December  1777,  Maximilian  Joseph  died. 

Maria  Theresa  was  opposed  to  the  line  of  action  upon 
which  Joseph  and  Kaunitz  had  resolved.  It  rather  too  much 
resembled  the  treatment  she  had  herself  received  in  1741 
to  find  favour  in  her  eyes.  To  bring  up  an  old  1  5th  Century 
arrangement  by  which  the  Emperor  Sigismund  had  granted 
Lower  Bavaria  to  Albert  V  of  Austria  as  a  female  fief4  and 
to  claim  Lower  Bavaria  on  the  extinction  of  the  main  Wittels¬ 
bach  line  in  virtue  of  this  former  ownership,  was  only  veiling 
mere  greed  for  territory  under  a  transparent  covering  of 
legality.  For  the  claim  on  parts  of  the  Upper  Palatinate  as 
fiefs  of  the  Bohemian  Crown  there  was  perhaps  a  rather 
better  case,  and  the  Emperor  had  the  right  to  sequester  a 
vacant  fief  of  the  Empire,  though  to  annex  it  to  his  hereditary 
dominions  would  exceed  his  powers.  However,  despite  the 
Empress-Queen’s  disapproval,  Joseph  and  Kaunitz  proceeded 
to  conclude  a  convention  with  Charles  Theodore  (January  2nd, 
1778)  by  which  the  Elector  recognised  Austria’s  right  to 

1  This  was  Lewis  n,  Duke  of  Bavaria  (1253-1294)  and  Elector  Palatine  ;  at  his 
death  (1294)  his  territories  had  been  divided,  Bavaria  going  to  Lewis  III,  Emperor 
1314-1347,  the  Palatinate  to  the  latter’s  brother  Rudolf. 

2  A  distant  cousin,  descended  from  Wolfgang  of  Zweibriicken  (1532-1569),  the 
common  ancestor  of  the  Neuburg,  Sulzbach,  Birkenfeld  and  Zweibriicken  lines. 

2  Cf.  genealogy  (p.  707)  and  p.  52. 

4  Albert  had  sold  it  to  the  Duke  of  Bavaria. 


312  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1778 


Lower  Bavaria,  to  Mindelheim  in  Swabia,  and  to  certain 
Bohemian  fiefs  with  which  last  alone  he  was  to  be  invested. 
The  prospect  of  arranging  an  exchange  for  the  whole  country 
was  also  held  out,  for  Austria  was  already  contemplating 
getting  rid  of  a  distant  province  which  was  a  burden  rather 
than  a  benefit  to  her,  the  Netherlands.  On  the  ratification 
of'  this  convention,  Austrian  troops  promptly  occupied  the 
Upper  Palatinate  (Jan.  16th,  1778). 

However,  this  merely  served  to  provoke  an  agitation  in 
Bavaria  against  the  project  of  division,  and  the  Duchess 
Marianne,  widow  of  Duke  Clement  of  Bavaria,1  put  herself 
at  the  head  of  the  party  which  desired  to  preserve  the  integrity 
of  the  Electorate.  Charles  of  Zweibriicken  had  expressed 
in  general  terms  his  acquiescence  in  the  scheme ;  but  when 
he  found  Frederick  II  inclined  to  support  him,  he  issued  a 
protest  against  the  violation  of  his  rights  as  heir-apparent. 
Frederick,  fearing  the  aggrandisement  of  Austria,  at  once 
refused  to  recognise  Austria’s  claims.  Saxony  had  a  claim 
on  the  allodial  property  in  Bavaria,  and  was  anything  but 
friendly  to  Austria ;  while  Hanover,  though  on  the  whole 
favouring  the  Austrian  claim,  did  not  go  beyond  benevolent 
neutrality.2 

Now  was  the  time  when  the  Franco- Austrian  alliance  on 
which  Kaunitz  and  Maria  Theresa  set  so  much  store,  and 
which  they  had  spared  no  pains  to  maintain,  was  to  be  put 
to  the  test.  But  it  was  Joseph’s  distrust  of  the  alliance,  not 
Maria  Theresa’s  confidence  in  it  which  was  to  be  justified. 
Vergennes  was  now  in  power  in  France  and  from  him  no 
support  to  the  aggrandisement  of  Austria  was  to  be  expected  ; 
even  if  France,  inspired  by  the  news  of  Saratoga,  had  not 
been  on  the  point  of  renewing  the  struggle  with  England  for 
the  dominion  of  the  seas,  Vergennes  would  never  have  con¬ 
sented  to  take  any  steps  on  behalf  of  the  Hapsburgs.  Nor 
did  Russia’s  attitude  correspond  to  Joseph’s  hopes;  on  the 
contrary,  she  inclined  to  support  Frederick.3 

Negotiations  continued  through  the  early  part  of  1778. 
Charles  Theodore  would  have  gladly  exchanged  Bavaria 
against  the  Netherlands ;  but  the  “  Old  Bavarian  ”  party  was 
opposed  to  this,  and  though  Frederick  did  propose  conditions 

1  The  younger  brother  of  Maximilian  Joseph,  who  had  predeceased  the  Elector. 

2  Cf.  Ward,  England  and  Hanover ,  p.  2op.  ;i  Wolf,  p.  176. 


1  779]  THE  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II 


313 


upon  which  he  would  have  agreed  to  the  annexation  of 
Eastern  Bavaria  by  Austria,  they  were  so  exorbitant 1  that 
Joseph  refused  them.  Accordingly,  on  July  3rd  Frederick 
issued  an  ultimatum,  declaring  that  Austria  had  no  just  claims 
upon  Bavaria,  and  two  days  later  he  crossed  the  Bohemian 
frontier  near  Nachod. 

The  chief  feature  of  the  War  of  the  Bavarian  Succession 
is  its  utter  absence  of  military  interest.  Practically  there  was 
no  fighting,  beyond  a  certain  amount  of  skirmishing,  and  but 
little  manoeuvring.  Both  armies  were  numerous  rather  than 
efficient.  In  both  the  administration  and  equipment  were 
somewhat  deficient ;  and  while  the  Austrians  for  political 
motives  adopted  the  defensive  Frederick  was  not  prepared  to 
attack.  Indeed,  both  sides  displayed  not  a  little  nervousness 
and  a  decided  wish  not  to  risk  anything  on  the  chances  of  a 
general  action,  the  more  so  because  negotiations  were  still 
proceeding.  Maria  Theresa,  thinking  Joseph  was  prepared  to 
give  way,  had  despatched  Thugut  to  Berlin  to  renew  them 
(July).  However,  nothing  came  of  this  attempt  to  avert 
hostilities.  Both  sides  regarded  the  pretensions  of  the  other 
as  exorbitant,  and  neither  was  ready  to  abate  its  own.  In 
August,  Frederick  advanced  somewhat  farther  into  Bohemia, 
Loudoun  recoiling  before  him  ;  but  the  difficulty  of  getting 
supplies  and  the  ravages  of  disease  effectually  checked  the 
Prussian  advance.  The  Austrian  position  at  Koniggratz  was 
too  strong  to  be  attacked,  and  in  September  Frederick  re¬ 
treated.  He  had  not  done  anything  to  add  to  his  military 
reputation  in  this,  his  last,  campaign. 

Maria  Theresa  was  now  using  all  her  influence  in  favour 
of  peace,  and  with  Russia,  guided  by  Panin  whom  Potemkin,  the 
Czarina’s  favourite,  had  won  over  to  Prussia’s  side,  threatening 
to  support  Frederick  unless  peace  were  made  directly,  and 
no  prospect  of  any  help  from  France,  even  Kaunitz  and 
Joseph  realised  the  hopelessness  of  securing  Bavaria.  An 
armistice  put  an  end  to  the  minor  warfare  which  had  continued 
with  but  little  result  through  the  winter ;  in  March  a  congress 
met  at  Tetschen,  and  the  upshot  of  its  deliberations  was  a 
peace  signed  on  May  13th,  1779.  By  this  Austria  agreed  to 

1  Mindelheim,  Swabia,  and  part  of  the  Upper  Palatinate  to  go  to  Saxony,  which 
should  hand  Lusatia  over  to  Prussia,  while  Charles  Theodore  was  to  receive 
Guelders  or  Limburg  in  return  for  the  cessions  made  to  Austria. 


3 H  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1779 


cancel  the  Convention  of  January  1778,  but  received  the  strip 
of  territory  between  the  Danube  on  the  North,  the  Inn  on 
the  West,  and  the  Salza  on  the  South  and  East,  a  district 
some  850  square  miles  in  size  and  containing  60,000  in¬ 
habitants.  As  a  settlement  of  its  claim  on  the  allodial 
property  Saxony  received  6,00 0,000  gulden  and  the  little 
district  of  Schonberg,  while  Prussia’s  right  to  absorb  the 
Franconian  margraviates  of  Anspach  and  Baireuth 1  was  to 
pass  unopposed.  The  Duke  of  Mecklenburg-Schwerin,  who  had 
also  advanced  a  claim  on  the  Bavarian  inheritance,  was  bought 
off  with  the  privilege  “  de  non  appellando.”  This  peace  was 
guaranteed  by  France  and  Russia,  and  in  the  following 
February  it  was  accepted  by  the  Empire. 

Of  the  Powers  concerned  in  the  Peace  of  Tetschen,  Russia 
had  undoubtedly  gained  most  in  influence.  She  rather  than 
France  had  held  the  balance  in  her  hands :  her  decision  as 
to  the  exchange  of  the  Franconian  margraviates  against 
Lusatia  and  as  to  the  amount  of  compensation  for  Saxony 
had  been  accepted  :  it  was  really  the  very  decided  line  she 
had  taken  which  had  foiled  Austria’s  attempt  on  Bavaria. 
Had  she  supported  Austria’s  claims,  as  Joseph  seems  to  have 
expected  she  would,  there  would  have  been  a  very  different 
story  to  tell.  Prussia  also  had  gained,  but  rather  indirectly 
than  materially.  The  war  had  cost  her  29  million  thalers 
and  20,000  men,  but  Frederick  was  able  to  represent  his 
action  as  a  disinterested  intervention  on  behalf  of  the  Princes 
of  the  Empire  against  an  Emperor  bent  on  turning  to  his 
own  advantage  such  relics  of  a  constitution  as  survived.  Such 
a  description  of  Joseph’s  policy  is  not  altogether  fair.  It 
would  not  have  been  to  the  disadvantage  of  Germany  if  the 
tide  of  French  conquest,  so  soon  to  overwhelm  her,  had  found 
her  a  little  less  weak  and  disunited,  had  found  an  Empire 
which  was  not  practically  extinct,  and  an  Emperor  whose 
authority  did  mean  something;  but  Joseph  does  appear  in  the 
light  of  one  prepared  to  seize  every  opportunity  of  profiting 
by  his  neighbours’  necessities  to  increase  his  territories. 
Rather  different  was  the  action  of  Maria  Theresa.  That  peace 

1  The  Baireuth  Hohenzollern  had  become  extinct  in  1769  with  Frederick,  6th 
Margrave:  his  territories  passed  to  the  Anspach  line.  In  1792,  by  arrangement 
between  Frederick  William  11  and  Christian  Frederick,  9th  Margrave  of  Anspach, 
the  Franconian  margraviates  were  incorporated  with  Prussia. 


1780]  THE  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II 


315 


was  so  soon  restored  was  largely  due  to  her  influence.  Had 
her  advice  been  followed  throughout,  Austria  would  have  been 
spared  the  humiliation  of  a  check  for  which  850  square  miles 
were  hardly  an  adequate  compensation.  It  was  almost  the  last 
episode  in  the  career  of  the  great  Empress,  for  her  health  was 
beginning  to  fail.  One  last  collision,  however,  was  to  take 
place  between  her  and  her  lifelong  enemy  Frederick,  and 
one  is  glad  to  be  able  to  relate  that  in  this  last  encounter 
Maria  Theresa  triumphed.  The  contest  was  over  the  election 
of  a  Coadjutor  to  the  Elector  of  Cologne.1  This  office  Maria 
Theresa  succeeded  in  obtaining  for  her  youngest  son, 
Maximilian,  Frederick’s  efforts  on  behalf  of  Joseph  Hohenlohe 
being  frustrated  (August  1780). 

But  her  failing  strength  would  not  much  longer  enable  her 
to  continue  the  daily  round  of  duties  in  which  she  still  persisted. 
In  November  she  became  rapidly  worse,  and  on  the  29th  she 
died.  What  she  did  for  Austria  it  is  hard  to  overestimate. 
Her  indomitable  courage  and  perseverance  carried  her 
dominions  through  an  almost  unexampled  danger  and  made 
the  surmounting  of  that  very  danger  a  source  of  union  and 
strength.  She  did  much  to  reconcile  Hungary  to  the  Haps- 
burg  dynasty,  to  reform  the  administration  and  the  social, 
financial  and  political  conditions  of  the  countries  over  which 
she  ruled.  A  woman  of  the  highest  character,  a  true  mother 
of  her  people,  a  “  benevolent  despot  ”  in  the  very  best  sense  of 
the  words,  she  had  the  tact  and  sympathy  to  see  what  was 
possible  and  suitable,  and  to  avoid  the  errors  into  which  her 
more  impetuous,  more  theoretical  and  more  self-centred  son 
fell.  In  all  the  annals  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg,  there  is 
hardly  any  name  which  can  be  put  on  the  same  level  as  that 
of  Maria  Theresa. 

The  importance  of  the  part  played  by  Russia  in  the  affair 
of  the  Bavarian  Succession  is  best  attested  by  the  eagerness 
with  which  Joseph  now  sought  to  secure  the  friendship  of  the 
Czarina.  Even  before  the  death  of  Maria  Theresa,  Joseph 
had  made  a  journey  to  Russia,  had  had  an  interview  with 
Catherine  at  Mohilev  in  Lithuania  (August  1780),  and  had 
subsequently  visited  Moscow  and  St.  Petersburg.  Maria 
Theresa,  who  was  not  unnaturally  prejudiced  against  Catherine 

1  This  was  Maximilian  of  Rottenfels,  Dean  of  Cologne  1756-1761,  electee! 
Archbishop  in  succession  to  Clement  Augustus  of  Bavaria,  April  1761. 


3i 6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1781 


as  a  person,  had  disliked  this  journey  very  much,  but  Joseph 
found  the  Czarina  most  anxious  for  better  relations  with  Austria. 

The  alliance  between  Russia  and  Prussia,  first  concluded 
in  1764  and  renewed  in  1772,  had  expired  in  1780  and 
had  not  been  renewed,  for  Frederick  did  not  by  any  means 
desire  to  see  Russia’s  power  further  increased,  and  Catherine 
had  not  found  Prussia  a  very  satisfactory  or  cordial  ally.  She 
was  now  occupied  with  schemes  for  ousting  the  Turks  from 
Europe  and  establishing  a  Christian  kingdom  under  Russian 
protection  on  the  Bosphorus  ;  and  in  carrying  out  such  aims  it 
was  far  more  important  to  secure  the  alliance,  or  at  least  the 
neutrality,  of  Austria  than  that  of  Prussia.  Accordingly,  after 
much  correspondence  an  arrangement  was  made  between 
Austria  and  Russia  in  May  1781  by  which  both  Powers 
guaranteed  each  other’s  possessions,  while  Joseph  promised 
to  join  Russia  within  three  months  should  she  go  to  war  with 
the  Porte,  and  also  guaranteed  Oldenburg  to  the  younger 
branch  of  the  House  of  Holstein.  Catherine  for  her  part 
promised  to  assist  Austria  in  case  of  a  Prussian  attack,  while 
in  the  course  of  the  year  Joseph  announced  his  adhesion  to 
the  “  Armed  Neutrality  ”  in  the  war  between  England  and 
her  Bourbon  enemies,  an  alliance  of  which  Catherine  was  the 
chief  bulwark.  It  was  not  to  be  long  before  the  Czarina  was 
to  have  an  opportunity  of  making  use  of  the  Austrian  alliance. 
Disturbances  among  the  Tartars  of  the  Crimea  in  the  course  of 
1782  threatened  to  lead  to  serious  trouble  with  the  Porte;  but 
though  Joseph  was  not  prepared  to  join  the  Czarina  in  using 
this  casus  belli  to  begin  the  crusade  for  the  dismemberment  of 
the  Ottoman  Empire  on  which  her  wishes  were  set,  he  was 
able  to  help  her  to  force  Turkey  to  give  way.  A  large  force 
was  collected  on  the  frontiers  of  Hungary  to  lend  weight  to 
the  diplomatic  representations  of  Joseph  on  behalf  of  the 
Russian  claims  to  suzerainty  over  the  Tartars,  and  it  was 
very  largely  the  prospect  of  having  to  face  Austria  as  well  as 
Russia  which  caused  the  Turks  in  January  1784  to  accept  a 
convention 1  which  secured  the  Crimea  and  the  Kuban  to 
Russia.  Austria’s  only  gain  from  this  treaty  was  the  opening 
of  the  Danube  to  commerce;  but  Joseph  now  reckoned  con¬ 
fidently  on  the  support  of  Russia  for  the  various  projects  which 
he  was  hoping  to  realise. 

1  That  of  Ainali  Karak. 


1783]  THE  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II 


317 


Mention  has  already  been  made  of  the  anomalous  relations 
in  which  the  Netherlands  stood  to  their  Austrian  rulers,  and 
also  of  the  great  obstacles  to  the  development  of  the  Nether¬ 
lands,  the  Barrier  Treaty  of  1715  and  the  closing  of  the  Scheldt 
in  accordance  with  the  Peace  of  Munster.  Maria  Theresa  had 
succeeded  in  reducing  the  annual  subsidy  paid  to  the  Dutch 
garrisons  from  a  million  gulden  to  half  a  million,  but  she  had 
been  unable  to  get  rid  of  the  Dutch,  whose  presence  was  a 
constant  source  of  friction.  It  was  after  a  journey  in  Belgium 
in  1781  that  Joseph,  realising  the  full  extent  of  these  en¬ 
cumbrances,  decided  to  seize  the  favourable  opportunity  of  the 
war  between  England  and  the  United  Provinces  to  get  rid  of 
them.  He  confined  himself  at  first  to  announcing  to  the  Dutch 
that  they  could  withdraw  their  garrisons,  as  he  intended  to 
“  slight  ”  the  majority  of  the  towns  in  question.  The  more 
important  question  of  the  Scheldt  he  did  not  at  this  time  raise, 
herein  giving  way  to  Kaunitz,  who  believed  that  it  would 
almost  certainly  provoke  a  war  with  France.  The  Dutch 
found  that  they  had  no  alternative  but  to  withdraw  their  troops, 
and  with  the  exception  of  Luxemburg,  Ostend  and  the  citadel 
of  Antwerp,  the  fortifications  were  demolished.  The  Barrier 
Treaty  had  also  contained  certain  agreements  as  to  territorial 
cessions  which  had  never  been  properly  carried  out,  and  Joseph, 
taking  advantage  of  a  technical  infraction  of  the  Belgian  frontier 
by  Dutch  troops,  denounced  the  treaty  as  null  and  void,  and 
demanded  a  readjustment  of  the  frontier.  At  the  same  time 
he  raised  the  question  of  the  opening  of  the  Scheldt  to 
commerce.1  A  Belgian  vessel  had  been  fired  upon  while  in 
Belgian  waters  (Oct.  1783),  and  this  served  as  the  occasion 
for  Joseph  to  demand  the  slighting  of  the  Dutch  forts  on  the 
Scheldt,  the  removal  of  the  guardships  and  the  surrender  of 
Maastricht  and  its  dependencies.  These  demands  were  based 
on  the  terms  of  a  convention  made  in  1673  between  Holland 
and  Spain.  To  enforce  his  claim,  Joseph  collected  some 
20,000  troops ;  but  they  were  ill-supplied  with  artillery,  and 
were  without  the  pontoon-train  so  urgently  needed  in  a  country 
so  much  intersected  by  watercourses  as  Holland,  and  the  Dutch, 
by  opening  the  sluices  and  inundating  the  frontier  districts, 
made  military  operations  impossible.  However,  it  was  not 
military  difficulties  but  the  attitude  of  France  which  made 

1  Cf.  Oncken’s  Frederick ,  vol.  ii.  p.  824. 


3 1 8  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1784 


Joseph  draw  back.  Had  Holland  stood  alone,  Joseph  might 
have  obtained  his  demands,  but  the  Anglo-Dutch  war  had  led 
to  a  renewal  of  the  old  alliance  between  France  and  the 
democratic  party  in  Holland.  This,  the  so-called  “  Burgher 
party,”  had  been  revived  by  the  influence  of  de  Vauguyon, 
French  envoy  at  The  Hague  since  1776,  and  Vergennes  was 
not  prepared  to  allow  Holland  to  fall  away  from  the  new 
connection,  as  would  probably  happen  if  France  by  failing 
to  support  her  forced  her  to  fall  back  on  England’s  aid. 
Accordingly,  when  negotiations  were  broken  off  after  Fort  Saf- 
tingen  had  fired  upon  a  brigantine  flying  the  Emperor’s  colours 
and  had  forced  it  to  strike  (Oct.  1784),  Joseph  found  the 
influence  of  France  thrown  into  the  scale  against  him.  Russia, 
it  is  true,  favoured  Joseph’s  action,  and  neither  England  nor 
Prussia  seemed  prepared  to  intervene  in  favour  of  Holland  ; 
but  the  resolute  language  of  Vergennes  convinced  Joseph  that 
the  risks  were  too  great.  The  question  seems  to  have  been 
with  him  to  a  large  extent  one  of  dignity.  He  did  not 
greatly  care  for  the  welfare  of  his  Belgic  provinces,  but  he 
resented  the  restrictions  imposed  upon  them  as  a  slight  on  his 
prestige.1  Therefore,  when  he  found  that  to  persevere  with 
his  plans  would  involve  the  ruin  of  the  Franco-Austrian 
alliance,  he  fell  back  upon  another  and  more  promising  project. 

If  the  Netherlands  could  not  be  freed  from  the  encumbrances 
which  prevented  the  development  of  their  natural  resources 
and  made  them  so  unsatisfactory  a  possession,  it  might  be 
possible  to  exchange  them  for  a  country  of  far  greater  value 
to  Austria,  the  Electorate  of  Bavaria.  The  idea  of  the  ex¬ 
change  was  not  altogether  new,  but  Joseph  thought  the  moment 
favourable  for  realising  it.  By  making  concessions  to  France  in 
the  matter  of  the  Scheldt  he  might  induce  her  to  sacrifice  Bavaria 
for  the  sake  of  Holland,  for  to  Vergennes  at  least  it  seemed 
better  for  France  to  have  a  Wittelsbach  than  a  Hapsburg  as 
her  neighbour  in  Belgium.  The  support  of  the  Czarina,  Joseph 
hoped  he  had  won  by  pointing  out  to  her  how  much  the 
acquisition  of  Bavaria  and  the  consequent  improvement  of 
Austria’s  resources  and  military  position  would  increase  her 
ability  to  assist  Russia’s  schemes  in  the  East.  The  Elector, 
Charles  Theodore,  cared  very  little  for  his  Bavarian  subjects, 
to  whom  no  real  ties  bound  him  ;  if  the  exchange  could  be 

1  Cf.  F.  Magnette,  Joseph  n  et  la  libertt  de  V Escant. 


1784]  THE  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II 


3i9 


arranged  on  terms  which  would  gratify  his  personal  interests 
he  was  quite  prepared  to  sacrifice  the  wishes  of  the  Bavarians 
and  the  interests  of  his  Zweibrticken  cousin.  All  that  seemed 
really  necessary  was  to  secure  the  consent  of  Charles  of 
Zweibiicken  to  the  agreement.  But,  somewhat  unexpectedly, 
when  the  Russian  Ambassador  to  Bavaria  approached  the  Duke 
on  this  matter,  he  was  met  by  the  most  uncompromising  reply : 
rather,  Charles  declared,  would  he  be  buried  under  the  ruins 
of  Bavaria.  Such  an  answer  could  mean  one  thing  only ;  it 
was  dictated  from  Potsdam,  and  the  Duke  had  received  trust¬ 
worthy  assurances  that  he  could  count  upon  the  assistance  of 
Frederick  II.  This  was  indeed  the  case.  As  jealous  as  ever  of 
Austria,  alarmed  by  her  alliance  with  Russia,  whose  power  he 
had  had  such  good  cause  to  appreciate,  determined  to  thwart  her 
wherever  possible  and  to  prevent  her  from  recovering  influence 
or  authority  over  the  minor  Princes  of  Germany,  Frederick  had 
been  playing  skilfully  on  the  distrust  which  Joseph’s  attempts 
to  assert  his  rights  as  Emperor  and  his  efforts  to  increase  his 
hereditary  dominions  had  caused  among  the  petty  sovereigns 
of  Southern  and  Western  Germany.  Quite  without  any 
general  patriotism,  oblivious  of  anything  but  their  own  per¬ 
sonal  and  dynastic  interests,  even  the  more  enlightened  and 
unselfish  among  them  were  bitterly  hostile  to  the  Imperial 
pretensions,  and  the  decay  of  the  Imperial  institutions  had 
already  proceeded  so  far  that  they  were  practically  past  re¬ 
viving.  Had  Joseph  been  able  to  come  forward  with  a 
definitely  Imperial  programme  it  is  just  possible  that  he  might 
have  done  something,  but  as  things  stood  it  was  impossible 
to  prevent  the  suspicion  that  under  the  cloak  of  the  interests 
of  the  Empire  he  was  seeking  to  aggrandise  the  Hapsburg- 
Lorraine  dynasty:  the  “  Imperial  ”  could  not  be  distinguished 
from  the  “  Austrian.”  But  while  Joseph  had  not  the  power 
to  do  what  Ferdinand  II,  though  with  much  better  chances 
and  with  Wallenstein  behind  him,  had  failed  to  accomplish, 
or  to  enforce  unity  on  Germany,  nothing  could  have  been 
more  alien  to  his  principles  or  his  practice  than  an  appeal  to 
the  people,  to  the  spirit  of  German  nationalism  which  was 
not  yet  awake;  he  would  have  been  glad  to  regain  the  powers 
his  predecessors  had  lost,  but  he  had  no  idea  of  replacing  the 
moribund  Empire  by  something  new. 

It  was  therefore  easy  for  Frederick  to  form  a  confederation 


320  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1784 


of  German  Princes  for  the  defence  of  their  rights  against  the 
Emperor’s  encroachments.  In  effect  much  the  same  as  the 
Union  of  Frankfort  of  1744,  since  both  were  aimed  against 
Austria,  in  theory  the  Fiirstenbund  was  somewhat  different, 
since  its  avowed  objects  were  anti- Imperial,  while  the  earlier 
league  had  been  formed  to  defend  the  then  Emperor.  But 
Frederick  was  only  inconsistent  on  the  surface:  he  sought  in 
both  cases  to  extend  Prussian  influence  over  Southern  and 
Western  Germany  at  the  expense  of  the  Hapsburgs.  The 
project  of  the  formation  of  such  a  confederation  was  set  forth 
in  a  memorandum  addressed  to  the  Prussian  ministers  von 
Finckenstein  and  Hertzberg  in  October  1784.  In  this  the 
King  of  Prussia  spoke  of  resisting  the  Emperor’s  attempts  to 
bestow  all  vacant  sees  on  his  nephews  from  Tuscany  and 
Modena,  and  by  then  secularising  the  sees  to  gain  a  permanent 
Hapsburg  majority  in  the  College  of  Princes — a  danger  about 
as  chimerical  as  the  other  peril  against  which  this  protector 
of  the  German  constitution  was  ready  to  invoke  foreign  aid, 
namely,  that  the  Emperor  should  convert  the  Diet  at  Ratisbon 
and  the  Imperial  Chamber  at  Wetzlar  into  the  instruments  of 
a  tyrannical  despotism.1 

Joseph  was,  it  is  true,  making  somewhat  futile  efforts  to 
restore  the  Aulic  Council  and  the  Imperial  Chamber  to  some 
measure  of  efficiency,  but  these  were  hardly  enough  to  justify 
Frederick’s  extravagant  fears.  In  the  matter  of  the  Panis-briefe, 
a  claim  that  the  Emperor  should  appoint  a  lay  canon  in  every 
ecclesiastical  corporation,  he  was  seeking  to  revive  a  right 
which  had  not  been  exercised  since  the  14th  Century,  and 
he  was  undoubtedly  anxious  to  get  his  candidate  elected 
whenever  any  sees  fell  vacant,  as,  for  example,  the  choice  of 
the  Archduke  Maximilian  as  Coadjutor  in  Cologne  and 
Munster.  That  he  also  entertained  designs  upon  the  Cities, 
the  ecclesiastical  dominions  and  the  minor  states  of  South 
Germany  in  general  is  probable  enough ;  it  is  also  probable 
that  incorporation  in  Austria  would  have  brought  to  the 
peasants  and  artisans  in  these  petty  principalities  considerable 
material  benefits,  which  might  perhaps  have  been  set  off  against 
the  infringement  of  the  rights  of  the  rulers  and  upper  classes. 
If  the  attainment  of  German  unity  was  desirable  in  any  way, 
there  is  no  reason  to  blame  Joseph  for  having  wished  to  reassert 

1  Oncken’s  Frederick ,  vol.  ii.  p.  834. 


1785]  THE  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II 


321 


the  claims  of  the  Empire  as  against  those  local  lords  whose 
disregard  of  the  Imperial  authority  had  received  the  sanction 
of  prescription  bestowed  upon  them  by  many  centuries. 

No  such  league  had  actually  been  formed,  when  in  January 
1785  Charles  of  Zweibrticken  appealed  to  Frederick  for 
assistance  in  the  matter  of  the  Bavarian  exchange.  This  was 
the  opportunity  Frederick  wanted,  and  in  March  Hertzberg 
and  von  Finckenstein  laid  before  the  King  projected  articles  of 
association  of  a  Union  of  Princes  of  the  Empire  to  guarantee 
and  maintain  the  existing  constitution  and  territorial  arrange¬ 
ments  of  Germany.  Its  members  were  to  act  together  in  the 
election  of  a  new  King  of  the  Romans  or  in  the  creation  of 
a  new  Electorate.  No  distinction  was  to  be  made  between 
religions,  and  it  was  definitely  stated  that  armed  resistance 
could  be  offered  to  the  proposed  exchange  of  Bavaria.  July 
23rd,  1785,  may  be  taken  as  the  date  of  the  definite  formation 
of  the  Union,  as  it  was  then  that  the  terms  of  association  were 
signed  by  the  Electors  of  Brandenburg,  Hanover  and  Saxony. 
In  October  the  Elector  of  Mayence,  the  Dukes  of  Saxe-Weimar, 
Saxe-Gotha,  Zweibriicken  and  Brunswick  declared  their  adhesion 
to  it ;  their  example  was  followed  in  November  by  the  Margrave 
of  Baden  and  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse- Cassel,  and  gradually  by 
most  of  the  other  members  of  the  Empire,  the  only  dissenti¬ 
ents  being  Cologne,  Treves,  Hesse-Darmstadt,  Oldenburg  and 
Wurtemberg.1  This  body  thus  commanded  a  majority  in  the 
Electoral  College,  and  as  the  Elector  of  Bavaria  had  hastened 
to  withdraw  his  consent  to  the  exchange  as  soon  as  he  found 
how  matters  were  going — in  February  1785  he  denied  that 
any  such  scheme  was  in  existence — Joseph’s  plan  was  again 
foiled. 

Moreover,  his  failure  was  not  confined  to  Bavaria  alone. 
To  obtain  French  assent  to  the  exchange  he  had  withdrawn 
most  of  the  claims  he  had  made  upon  Holland.  He  had 
accepted  French  mediation  and  this  practically  implied  the 
abandonment  of  his  designs  upon  the  Scheldt.  To  the  great 
disgust  of  his  Belgian  subjects,  who  saw  the  high  hopes  of 
commercial  prosperity  they  had  based  on  Joseph’s  demands 
thus  irretrievably  disappointed,  he  gradually  abandoned  claim 
after  claim.  Finally,  in  November  1785  the  Treaty  of 

1  These  last  two  were  connected  with  Russia  ;  Hesse-Darmstadt  was  consistently 
on  the  Austrian  side. 


21 


322  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1785 


Fontainebleau  reaffirmed  the  Peace  of  Munster  and  maintained 
the  closing  of  the  Scheldt,  though  some  of  the  forts  were 
handed  over  to  the  Emperor,  others  “  slighted,”  and  the  frontier 
restored  to  its  condition  in  1664.  Maastricht  remained  in 
Dutch  hands,  but  ten  million  gulden,  of  which  France  paid 
four  and  a  half,  were  handed  over  to  the  Emperor  as  a 
pecuniary  compensation.  Thus  Joseph  received  a  decided 
rebuff,  and  at  the  hands  of  France.  The  support  of  Russia  had 
not  passed  much  beyond  words,  and  the  discontent  of  the 
Belgian  population  at  the  way  in  which  their  interests  had 
been  sacrificed  was  destined  to  lead  to  further  trouble.  So 
complete  a  surrender  after  such  protestations  smacked  of 
insincerity  and  gave  good  grounds  for  complaints  that  Belgian 
interests  were  altogether  disregarded  by  the  Emperor.  The 
internal  troubles  so  soon  to  convulse  the  Austrian  Netherlands,1 
may  be  traced  in  part  to  the  failure  of  Joseph’s  designs  on 
Bavaria. 

After  these  disappointments  it  was  not  unnatural  that 
Joseph  should  have  asked  himself  whether  the  Russian 
alliance  had  proved  as  beneficial  as  he  had  hoped.  It  was 
not  to  Austria’s  interests  to  assist  Russia’s  advance  upon 
Constantinople  unless  Russian  influence  were  going  to  obtain 
for  her  corresponding  advantages  in  Germany.  But  with 
France  decidedly  unfriendly,  and  with  the  minor  Princes  of 
Germany  leagued  together  under  Prussian  influence,  it  seemed 
that  the  only  alternative  to  the  Russian  alliance  was  complete 
isolation,  and  for  this  Joseph  was  not  altogether  prepared. 

However,  in  the  year  following  the  formation  of  the 
Fiirstenbund ,  the  death  of  Frederick  II  2  seemed  to  make  a  new 
policy  possible.  The  generation  which  had  known  Silesia  as 
part  of  the  Hapsburg  dominions  had  passed  or  was  passing 
away.  Joseph  for  his  part  had  never  entertained  that  intense 
and  personal  feeling  of  hostility  to  the  Hohenzollern  which  had 
animated  his  mother,  and  he  seems  to  have  contemplated  a 
reconciliation  with  Frederick  William  II.  The  new  King,  the 
son  of  the  unfortunate  Augustus  William  whose  conduct  of  the 
retreat  from  Bohemia  had  so  annoyed  Frederick  II  in  1757, 
was  of  a  very  different  calibre  to  his  famous  uncle.  He  had 
none  of  the  calm  self-command,  of  the  cold-blooded  calculation, 
of  the  clear-sightedness,  of  the  acute  judgment,  of  the  initiative, 

1  Vide  infra,  pp.  340  fif.  2  August  17th,  17S6. 


1 786-7]  THE  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II 


323 


energy  and  resource,  of  the  capacity  for  sustained  efforts,  of 
the  power  to  work  himself  and  to  exact  work  from  others, 
which  had  made  Frederick  II  so  successful  a  ruler.  Frederick 
William’s  talents  were  mediocre  ;  he  had  neither  the  will  nor  the 
capacity  to  be  a  really  efficient  ruler,  or  to  effectively  control 
and  supervise  the  elaborate  governmental  machine  of  which 
as  King  he  was  the  pivot,  and  the  decay  of  Prussia  under 
his  rule  must  be  in  large  measure  attributed  to  his  utter 
failure  to  fill  his  uncle’s  place.  Personally  he  was  the  slave  of 
his  passions,  extremely  self-indulgent,  yet  mingling  superstition 
with  sensuality  and  a  kind  of  morbid  religious  devotion  with 
his  debaucheries,  a  strange  mixture  which  recalls  Louis  XV  but 
has  nothing  in  common  with  the  Atheistic  cynicism  and 
deliberate  selfishness  of  Frederick  II. 

It  was  not  unnatural  that  Joseph  should  have  entertained 
the  project  of  a  Prussian  alliance.  As  he  explained  to  Kaunitz, 
Austria  and  Prussia  if  united  would  have  nothing  to  fear  from 
any  other  Power,  and  might  be  able  to  secure  a  lasting  peace. 
A  common  nationality  and  a  common  language  would  provide 
a  bond  of  union  which  ought  to  be  able  to  obliterate  old 
prejudices  and  hostility,  and,  if  Austria  could  forget  the  past 
and  forgive  Silesia,  it  should  have  been  possible  to  present  to 
the  growing  influence  of  Russia  that  barrier  which  the  Silesian 
question  had  hitherto  prevented  the  two  leading  Powers  of 
Germany  from  forming.  But  it  was  not  to  be.  Joseph’s 
doubts  of  the  value  of  the  Russian  alliance  were  not  shared  by 
Kaunitz,  who  could  not  be  expected  to  get  rid  of  his  distrust 
of  the  Power  he  had  sought  so  hard  to  humble,  and  he  pleaded 
strongly  against  the  proposed  overtures  to  Prussia.  Moreover, 
Frederick  William  retained  as  his  Foreign  Minister  the  man 
who  represented  the  traditions  of  hostility  to  Austria  which  had 
been  the  foundation  of  his  uncle’s  policy,  and  as  long  as 
Hertzberg  was  in  power  at  Berlin  a  reconciliation  between 
Austria  and  Prussia  was  out  of  the  question.  Accordingly 
Joseph,  not  without  misgivings,  accepted  Catherine’s  invitation 
to  visit  her  and  in  May  1787  undertook  a  visit  to  Russia. 
With  the  Russian  Court  he  journeyed  through  the  newly-acquired 
provinces  on  the  Black  Sea,  and  it  would  seem  that  in  the  course 
of  this  progress  he  pledged  himself  to  support  the  schemes  of 
aggrandisement  at  the  expense  of  Turkey  which  Catherine 
entertained.  However  that  may  have  been,  in  August  1787 


324  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1788 


the  Sultan,  alarmed  by  the  unconcealed  preparations  of  Russia, 
startled  the  world  by  suddenly  arresting  the  Russian  Ambas¬ 
sador  and  issuing  a  declaration  of  war.  By  the  Treaty  of  1781, 
Joseph’s  obligations  were  limited  to  an  auxiliary  corps  of 
30,000  men ;  but  he  was  ambitious  of  military  fame  and 
anxious  to  obtain  a  share  in  the  direction  of  the  war  by 
taking  a  principal’s  part  in  it,  and  accordingly  he  collected 
in  Southern  Hungary  an  army  of  1 30,000,  and  in  February 
1788  declared  war. 

The  results  of  this  step  fell  very  far  short  of  Joseph’s 
anticipations.  The  failure  owing  to  fog  of  the  attempt  to 
surprise  Belgrade,  which  Joseph  had  made  even  before  the 
declaration  of  war,  was  typical  of  the  Austrian  performances. 
For  the  campaign  of  1788  the  principal  force  under  Joseph 
himself  was  to  attempt  the  invasion  of  Servia,  while  a  subsidiary 
force  on  the  right  under  Loudoun  assailed  Bosnia,  and  another 
on  the  left  under  Coburg  co-operated  with  the  Russians  in 
Moldavia.  Loudoun  was  fairly  successful,  capturing  Dubitza, 
Novi  and  Schabatz,  while  despite  the  late  arrival  of  the  Russians, 
Coburg  did  take  Choczim  on  the  Dniester  (September)  and  so 
pave  the  way  for  an  advance  into  Wallachia.  But  the  main 
army  not  only  was  unable  to  attempt  the  siege  of  Belgrade, 
it  failed  to  prevent  the  Turks  invading  and  ravaging  the  Banat ; 
and  though  Joseph,  hurrying  thither,  forced  them  to  retire,  this 
was  at  best  a  negative  success.  The  truth  was  that  Joseph 
had  not  the  qualities  needed  by  a  successful  general.  Though 
a  keen  soldier,  he  was  deficient  in  strategical  insight ;  and  as  he 
never  knew  where  to  draw  the  line  between  a  commander-in¬ 
chiefs  due  supervision  of  his  subordinates  and  meddlesome 
interference,  his  lieutenants  altogether  lacked  confidence  in  him. 
Moreover,  the  army  suffered  terribly  from  disease,  and  in 
November  Joseph  himself  had  to  return  to  Vienna  very  much 
out  of  health. 

It  was  not  only  the  ill-success  of  the  campaign  which 
caused  Joseph  anxiety.  Prussia,  as  usual  finding  her  oppor¬ 
tunity  in  the  embarrassments  of  her  neighbours,  was  on  the 
alert,  eager  to  utilise  the  Austro-Turkish  war  to  make  good 
her  own  designs  on  the  much-coveted  Polish  towns  of  Dantzic 
and  Thorn.  Hertzberg  and  Frederick  William  II  had  just 
secured  no  slight  advantages  by  their  intervention  in  Holland 
on  behalf  of  the  House  of  Orange.  The  old  struggle  between 


1738]  THE  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II 


325 


the  Stadtholcler  and  the  burgher  aristocracy  of  Amsterdam  had 
come  to  a  head  in  1786.  An  armed  rebellion  had  forced 
William  V  and  his  wife  Wilhelmina,  Frederick  William’s  sister, 
to  fly  from  The  Hague  and  appeal  to  England  and  Prussia  for 
assistance.  This  the  two  Powers  were  very  ready  to  grant, 
Prussia  largely  for  dynastic  reasons,  England  in  order  to  detach 
Holland  from  her  new  connection  with  France,  on  whose 
support  the  Burgher  party  were  relying.  But  at  the  critical 
moment  (Feb.  1787)  Vergennes  died,  and  France,  without  a 
minister  capable  of  controlling  her  or  following  a  consistent 
foreign  policy,  looked  on  feebly  while  England  and  Prussia 
interfered  to  suppress  the  insurrection,  restored  the  Stadt- 
holderate  and  concluded  an  alliance  in  which  Holland  was 
included.  This  successful  episode  greatly  increased  the 
prestige  of  Prussia,  though  no  doubt  the  ease  with  which  it 
was  accomplished  may  have  contributed  to  the  utterly  false 
estimate  which  Frederick  William  formed  of  the  possibilities 
of  intervening  in  a  not  dissimilar  situation  in  France  five  years 
later.  The  formation  of  the  Triple  Alliance  (June  1788) 
seemed  to  provide  Hertzberg  with  a  powerful  influence  which 
he  could  bring  to  bear  upon  the  situation  in  the  East  of  Europe. 
His  idea  was  to  offer  to  mediate  between  Turkey  and  her 
enemies,  and  so  manipulate  the  terms  of  peace  as  to  induce  or 
compel  Austria  to  resign  Galicia  to  Poland,  which  would  then 
reward  Prussia’s  good  offices  by  the  cession  of  Dantzic  and 
Thorn,  now  as  ever  the  key  to  all  Prussia’s  intrigues.  There 
was  at  least  no  uncertainty  about  Prussia’s  objects.  As  a 
compensation,  Austria  was  to  keep  Moldavia  and  Wallachia, 
while  Russia  might  bring  her  boundary  up  to  the  Dniester. 
Should  Prussia’s  mediation  be  refused,  a  threat  of  armed  inter¬ 
ference  would,  Hertzberg  hoped,  prove  efficacious,  especially  if 
he  had  the  Maritime  Powers  at  his  back.  They  also  were 
ready  for  intervention,  but  their  objects  were  not  quite  the  same 
as  Hertzberg’s.  Trade  interests,  both  in  the  Baltic  and  in  the 
Levant,  made  Pitt  anxious  for  the  restoration  of  peace  ;  beyond 
that  he  was  not  prepared  to  go. 

Joseph  was  so  far  alarmed  by  the  attitude  of  Prussia, 
which  besides  encouraging  the  Porte  was  in  communication 
with  the  Hungarian  malcontents 1  and  was  fostering  the 
growing  trouble  in  Belgium,  that  he  at  first  thought  to 

1  C f.  p.  345. 


326  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1789 


checkmate  Prussia  by  a  prompt  peace  with  Turkey,  with  or 
without  Russia.  Kaunitz,  however,  dissuaded  him  strongly 
from  this,  and  neither  Russia  nor  Turkey  seemed  inclined  to 
peace.  The  only  result  of  the  negotiations,  therefore,  was  that 
the  opening  of  the  campaign  of  1789  was  much  delayed. 
During  the  winter,  Suvorov  had  stormed  the  great  fortress 
of  Oczakov  on  the  Black  Sea  (Dec:  7th,  1788),  while  the 
death  of  the  Sultan,  Abdul  Hamid  (April  27th),  had  placed  on 
the  Turkish  throne  Selim  III,  a  keen  and  energetic  ruler,  bent 
on  the  active  prosecution  of  the  war.  His  first  step  was  to 
disgrace  the  Grand  Vizier  and  replace  him  at  the  head  of  the 
army  by  the  Pasha  of  Widdin.  However,  the  new  commander 
received  two  severe  defeats  at  the  hands  of  Coburg  and 
Suvorov ; 1  while  Loudoun,  who  replaced  the  worn-out  Hadik  in 
command  of  the  main  Austrian  army  (August),  also  took  the 
offensive  with  success.  Breaking  up  from  Semlin  he  crossed  to 
the  south  of  the  Save  and  laid  siege  to  Belgrade  (Sept.  1  8th). 
The  suburb  was  stormed  on  September  30th,  and  eight  days 
later  the  town  capitulated.  Its  fall  was  followed  by  the  sur¬ 
render  of  the  fortresses  between  the  Drina  and  the  Timok, 
Semendria,  Kladowa  and  others.  Bosnia,  Moldavia,  half  Servia 
and  the  greater  part  of  Wallachia  were  in  Austrian  hands,  and 
Austria  seemed  on  the  verge  of  great  successes  when  the  news 
of  the  outbreak  of  trouble  in  Belgium  (August)  and  the 
threatening  attitude  of  Prussia  paralysed  her  advance.  The 
greater  part  of  the  Austrian  troops  had  to  be  transferred  to 
Bohemia,  leaving  on  the  Danube  forces  hardly  adequate  to 
maintain  the  ground  already  won,  while  little  help  was  to  be 
expected  from  Russia,  whose  attention  had  been  diverted  to 
the  Baltic  to  meet  the  vigorous  attacks  of  Gustavus  III  of 
Sweden. 

For  this  intervention,  Hertzberg  was  mainly  responsible. 
It  was  not  to  Austria  only  that  he  was  hostile,  his  attitude 
towards  Russia  was  equally  antagonistic.  Thus  he  fostered 
and  abetted  the  Swedish  King’s  hostility  to  Russia,  and  by 
addressing  himself  to  the  anti-Russian  faction  in  Poland  seemed 
to  have  secured  control  of  that  country.  It  appeared  certain 
that  the  spring  of  1790  would  see  the  sword  of  Prussia  thrown 
into  the  scales  on  the  side  of  Turkey,  when  in  February  1790 

1  On  July  31st  at  Foksani  and  in  September  at  Martinestyi  on  the  Rymnik,  both 
places  just  West  of  Galatz. 


1 790]  THE  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II 


327 


the  situation  was  completely  altered  by  the  death  of  Joseph  11 
and  the  accession  of  a  more  practical  and  competent  statesman 
in  Leopold  II. 

Ever  since  the  campaign  of  1788  Joseph  had  been  in  very 
bad  health,  and  the  constitutional  troubles  in  Hungary  and 
the  outbreak  of  rebellion  in  Belgium,  where  he  had  hoped  all 
was  settled,  had  naturally  aggravated  the  physical  and  mental 
strain.  In  great  bodily  pain,  he  had  the  misfortune  to  see  his 
cherished  schemes  leading  to  failure  and  disaster  everywhere, 
his  reforms  misunderstood,  his  efforts  to  increase  his  dominions 
frustrated,  Belgium  in  open  rebellion,  Hungary  seething  with 
discontent,  similar  troubles  impending  in  Tyrol,  a  powerful 
coalition  apparently  about  to  intervene  to  take  advantage  of 
his  domestic  and  foreign  embarrassments.  So  black  was  the 
outlook,  so  formidable  the  crisis  which  he  seemed  to  be  going 
to  leave  to  his  successor,  that  Joseph  could  not  persevere  on 
his  chosen  course.  In  January  1790  he  gave  way  to  the 
constitutional  opposition  of  Hungary,  cancelled  all  his  edicts 
save  only  those  in  favour  of  the  serfs,  and  restored  the  ad¬ 
ministrative  system  to  the  footing  on  which  it  had  stood  at 
Maria  Theresa’s  death.  It  was  with  the  greatest  reluctance 
that  he  did  this,  but  there  seemed  no  alternative.  One  other 
step  which  he  took  just  before  his  death  was  to  re-establish 
a  special  Conference  to  deal  with  foreign  affairs,  which  included 
Kaunitz  and  Lacy  and  the  Treasurer,  Count  Rosenberg,  while 
Count  Hatzfeldt  was  put  in  charge  of  domestic  affairs.  On 
February  20th  Joseph  died  at  the  early  age  of  forty-eight 
(born  March  1741). 


CHAPTER  XVI 


MARIA  THERESA  AND  JOSEPH  II 
(Domestic  Affairs) 

IF  from  the  time  of  the  Partition  of  Poland,  Joseph  II  had 
begun  to  exercise  the  predominant  influence  in  the 
direction  of  the  foreign  affairs  of  Austria,  this  was  as  much 
the  case  in  domestic  policy;  for  though  Joseph  treated  his 
mother  with  great  deference  and  paid  much  attention  and 
respect  to  the  ideas  and  suggestions  of  Kaunitz,  he  had  made 
up  his  own  mind  on  many  important  points  and  was  de¬ 
termined  to  push  through  without  delay  the  reforms  which 
he  desired.  Both  Maria  Theresa  and  Kaunitz  found  the  pace 
which  Joseph  set  too  hot  for  their  liking.  Well-intentioned, 
energetic,  a  very  hard  worker,  keenly  and  genuinely  anxious 
to  benefit  his  subjects,  Joseph  was  too  much  of  a  doctrinaire, 
too  little  of  a  practical  man  to  distinguish  between  the  possible 
and  the  ideal  and  to  be  able  to  adapt  to  his  extraordinary 
complicated  collection  of  dominions  measures  better  suited  to 
a  Utopia.  The  problem  of  Austria  was  one  which  Joseph 
failed  to  look  at  from  an  Austrian  point  of  view :  he  was  too 
detached,  too  little  acquainted  with  the  feelings  of  his  subjects, 
too  little  touched  by  the  local  patriotism  and  provincial  esprit 
de  corps  which  animated  them.  He  could  not  see  the  parts 
for  the  whole,  they  could  not  see  the  whole  for  the  parts. 
Thus  wise  and  salutary  as  many  of  his  schemes  were  in 
themselves,  they  were  applied  to  situations  and  circumstances 
so  unsuitable  that  the  good  often  became  evil.  Want  of  tact, 
want  of  patience,  want  of  knowledge  of  men,  want  of  sympathy 
with  other  men’s  views,  all  these  played  a  large  part  in  the 
comparative  failure  of  the  reforms  of  Joseph  II. 

Among  the  institutions  which  needed  reform,  the  Church 
stood  out  prominently.  It  was  rich,  powerful,  numerous,  but 
backward,  negligent  and  superstitious.  It  was  still  in  the 

32S 


1770-90]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  JOSEPH  II 


329 


1 6th  Century,  and  as  there  was  little  chance  that  it  would 
be  reformed  from  within,  the  State  had  to  undertake  the 
task.  Joseph  I  had  done  something  in  this  way,  Charles  VI 
had  also  dabbled  with  the  question,  while  the  second  decade 
of  Maria  Theresa’s  reign  had  seen  the  Church  courts  regulated, 
the  increase  of  clerical  estates  checked  and  the  condition  of 
those  already  in  Church  hands  improved  by  their  administration 
being  put  under  the  supervision  of  the  Chancery  (1750).  It 
was  between  1770  and  1 780,  however,  that  more  radical  meas¬ 
ures  were  taken,  and  for  these  Joseph  was  mainly  responsible. 
Austria  was  strongly  Catholic,  but  the  reforming  movement 
of  the  period  enjoyed  the  support  of  public  opinion,  since  it 
did  not  touch  the  teaching  or  dogma  of  the  Church,  but  only 
affected  it  as  a  social  and  political  institution.  It  is  true  that 
the  number  of  fast-  and  feast-days  was  curtailed,  but  that  was 
done  for  an  economic  reason,  to  diminish  the  interference  of 
such  religious  ceremonies  with  labour  and  industry.  In  the 
same  way  the  efforts  to  combat  the  many  superstitious  and 
semi-pagan  rites  and  practices  which  still  prevailed  hardly 
affected  the  real  tenets  of  the  Church.  The  more  important 
reforms  related  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  clergy  over  the  laity, 
into  which  a  commission  inquired  between  1765  and  1780, 
with  the  result  that  the  laity  were  only  subjected  to  ecclesi¬ 
astical  courts  in  matrimonial  affairs,  to  the  property  of  the 
Church,  which  was  made  liable  for  a  fair  share  of  the  ordinary 
taxes  on  landed  property,  and  to  the  monasteries,  whose  powers 
and  privileges  were  much  reduced,  while  the  abuses  with  regard 
to  their  acquisition  of  property  were  checked  by  monks  being 
forbidden  to  witness  wills,  and  so  exercise  undue  influence  over 
dying  testators.  The  amount  of  property  a  novice  might  bring 
in  on  being  admitted  was  also  regulated,  and  the  purchase 
of  lands  by  monastic  bodies  was  subjected  to  State  control. 
Other  useful  measures  were  the  limitation  of  the  right  of 
asylum  (1775)  and  the  redistribution  of  the  Bishoprics,  as  the 
mediaeval  scheme  was  now  quite  obsolete.  Maria  Theresa 
founded  new  sees  at  Gorz,  Leitmeritz,  Koniggratz  and  Briinn, 
and  erected  Olmiitz  into  an  Archbishopric.  Joseph  II  created 
six  more  sees,  transferred  three  others  to  new  places,  and 
managed  to  detach  those  districts  which  while  politically  part 
of  Austria  belonged  to  non-Austrian  sees  from  the  dioceses 
to  which  they  belonged.  Thus  Linz,  one  of  his  own  founda- 


330IGERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1770- 


tions,  and  Vienna,  a  see  created  by  Charles  VI,  shared  the 
portions  of  Upper  Austria  hitherto  subject  to  Passau.1  These 
arrangements  were  completed  by  1783,  and,  though  only  after 
some  demur,  were  duly  accepted  and  ratified  by  the  Pope. 

That  reforms  so  extensive  should  have  led  to  a  conflict 
with  the  Papacy  was  only  natural,  for  they  certainly  infringed 
the  privileges  and  pretensions  of  the  Pope.  It  would  seem 
that  Joseph  had  studied  the  famous  pamphlet,  De  statu 
Ecclesice  et  legitima  potestate  Romani  pontificis ,  by  means 
of  which  Febronius  had  exercised  so  much  influence  over 
Catholic  Germany  in  the  18th  Century,  expressing  views  which 
were  widely  held.  Something  had  already  been  done  in  this 
direction,  for  in  1755  an  order  had  been  published  directing 
that  all  excommunications  should  be  made  known  to  the 
government,  and  in  1767  old  ordinances  were  revived  which 
forbade  the  promulgation  of  Papal  Bulls  without  the  leave  of 
the  State.  Joseph  himself  would  probably  have  gladly  gone 
a  good  deal  further  than  this  in  the  direction  indicated  by 
Febronius.  His  views  were,  to  say  the  least,  Erastian  in  the 
extreme,  and  there  were  those  who  accused  him  of  being  a 
freethinker  and  could  make  out  a  plausible  case  in  support 
of  their  charge.  However,  though  he  may  have  contemplated 
emulating  Henry  VIII  in  breaking  the  bonds  of  Rome,  that 
was  a  step  for  which  Austria  was  certainly  not  prepared. 
Public  opinion  had  been  mainly  on  Joseph’s  side  in  his 
quarrel  with  the  Papacy  over  his  reforms ;  and  the  famous 
“  Ems  Punktuation  ”  of  1786,  by  which  the  four  German 
Archbishops  reduced  the  Papal  authority  over  Germany  to 
quite  narrow  limits,2  shows  that  the  anti-Papal  feeling  in 
Germany  was  not  confined  to  the  laity ;  but  a  complete  breach 
between  the  Papacy  and  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  was  out  of 
the  question.  Moreover,  the  wisdom  of  the  Popes  in  making 
timely  concessions  assisted  to  disarm  hostility.  The  relations 
between  Austria  and  Clement  XIII  (1758— 1769)  had  at  times 
been  very  much  strained,  but  Clement  XIV  (1769— 1774)  gave 
way  on  most  of  the  points  at  issue,  and  Pius  VI  (1774—1799) 
yielded  to  the  unimpeachable  orthodoxy  of  Maria  Theresa 
what  he  would  never  have  conceded  to  Joseph,  whom  he 
regarded  as  little  better  than  an  Atheist. 

In  some  ways,  however,  the  most  important  feature  in  the 
1  Cf.  Wolf,  p.  259.  2  Cf.  Fisher,  p.  10. 


1 79°]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  JOSEPH  II 


33i 


relations  between  Church  and  State  during  this  period  was  the 
part  played  by  Austria  in  a  movement  common  to  almost  all 
Europe,  the  attack  on  the  Jesuits.  This  was  of  special 
importance  in  Austria,  since  it  involved  the  liberation  of 
education  from  the  hands  of  the  Jesuits  who  had  till  then 
enjoyed  an  almost  complete  control  of  it.  In  Austria  the 
Jesuit  Order  was  wealthy  and  powerful  and  most  unpopular, 
and  it  was  not  only  the  lay  officials,  but  the  Bishops  who 
disliked  them  and  were  anxious  for  their  overthrow.  Maria 
Theresa  had  at  first  held  back  from  the  general  attack, 
regarding  the  abolition  of  the  Order  as  a  purely  ecclesiastical 
affair,  which  ought  therefore  to  be  left  solely  to  the  Pope. 
However,  on  the  publication  of  the  Bull  abolishing  the 
Society  of  Jesus,  she  did  not  hesitate  to  put  it  into  execution. 
A  commission  was  appointed  to  look  after  their  affairs,  which 
issued  its  report  in  January  1774.  The  property  of  the 
Order  was  confiscated,  but  it  was  appropriated  to  the  objects 
to  which  it  had  been,  theoretically  at  least,  devoted,  pious 
works  and  education. 

The  fall  of  the  Jesuits  opened  the  way  to  really  consider¬ 
able  reforms  in  education.1  Over  200  Gymnasia  were  in  their 
hands,  and  they  practically  controlled  the  Universities  through 
being  supreme  in  the  Philosophical  and  Theological  Faculties. 
The  education  they  gave  was  still  the  education  of  the 
1 6th  Century.  Nothing  had  been  done  to  keep  in  touch  with 
modern  developments ;  all  modern  studies  were  neglected, 
and  their  scholars  could  hardly  write  their  own  language. 
The  leader  of  the  attacks  on  the  educational  system  of  the 
Jesuits  was  the  celebrated  Viennese  physician,  Gerhard  van 
Swieten,  a  man  who  enjoyed  a  considerable  share  of  Maria 
Theresa’s  confidence.  Under  his  leadership  the  great  Medical 
School  of  Vienna  was  founded,  while  Philosophy  and  Theology, 
released  from  Jesuitical  trammels,  made  great  strides.  The 
Legal  Faculty  had  already  (1753— 1754)  been  reformed,  and 
it  was  kept  up  to  date;  while  the  University  was  brought 
under  State  control,  not,  perhaps,  the  ideal  chance  for  its 
development,  but  still  an  improvement  on  its  complete 
subjugation  to  the  Church.  The  Gymnasia  were  also  reformed, 
Professor  von  Gaspari  being  mainly  responsible  for  the  new 
measures.  Modern  subjects  like  History  and  Geography 

1  Cf.  Wolf,  Bk.  ii.  ch.  2. 


332  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1770- 


were  introduced  into  the  curriculum ;  and  though  it  was 
impossible  to  establish  complete  uniformity,  or  from  want 
of  qualified  teachers  to  dispense  altogether  with  ex-Jesuits  as 
instructors,  a  great  deal  was  done  to  reduce  confusion  to 
order  and  to  establish  State  control.  The  reform  of  the 
elementary  schools  ( Volkschiilen )  presented  fewer  difficulties. 
Here  again  what  was  actually  accomplished  fell  short  of 
what  was  aimed  at,  but  primary  education  on  a  fairly  liberal 
scale  was  provided  under  the  ordinances  of  1774.  Finally, 
in  1778  the  educational  Commission  which  had  been  estab¬ 
lished  in  1760  was  put  under  the  direction  of  the 
Chancery. 

After  the  death  (Nov.  29th,  1780)  of  Maria  Theresa, 
Joseph  carried  his  Church  reforms  still  further,  and  between 
1781  and  1784  many  very  important  measures  were  added. 
He  was  bitterly  opposed  by  the  Papal  Nuntios  and  by  the 
Archbishops  of  Gran,  Olmiitz  and  Vienna ;  but  he  had  at  his 
back  a  strong  reforming  party,  including  Kaunitz,  the  younger 
van  Swieten,  Vice-Chancellor  Greiner,  and  the  Bishops  of 
Laibach  and  Ivoniggratz.  The  first  point  of  attack  was  the 
relations  of  the  Austrian  clergy  with  Rome.  Joseph  began 
(March  1781)  by  renewing  the  Placitum  Rcgium  of  Maria 
Theresa,  by  forbidding  any  communication  between  monastic 
Orders  in  Austria  and  their  headquarters  at  Rome  or  their 
branches  in  other  countries  and  by  cutting  out  of  the 
Service-book  the  Bulls  Unigcnitus  and  In  Ccena  Domini 
(claiming  dispensing  power  for  the  Pope).  He  followed 
up  these  steps  by  attacking  the  monasteries.  Austria  teemed 
with  monastic  establishments,1  many  of  them  in  a  bad 
condition,  some  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy.  All  that  Maria 
Theresa  had  done  was  to  impose  on  them  a  share  in  taxation 
and  regulate  their  liability  to  ecclesiastical  law.  Joseph  went 
further,  he  sought  to  diminish  their  number.  In  1781 
the  monasteries  devoted  to  the  speculative 2  life  were 
closed,  and  the  funds  thus  obtained  were  devoted  to  the  local 
clergy,  whose  numbers  and  position  Joseph  sought  to  improve. 
In  1782  the  assault  fell  on  the  Carthusians,  Augustinians, 
Carmelites,  Capuchins  and  Franciscans :  their  convents  and 
monasteries  were  shut,  the  inmates  being  pensioned  off.  It 
was  in  vain  that  Pius  VI  came  to  Vienna  (March  22nd  to 

1  In  1781  there  were  2163  in  Austria  with  65,000  inmates.  2  Bcschaulich. 


1 790]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  JOSEPH  II 


333 


April  24th,  1782)  to  expostulate;  his  visit  had  little  effect 
beyond  lowering  his  own  prestige.  He  could  not  go  very 
far,  for  he  was  much  afraid  of  a  schism ;  and  if  the  Pope 
adopted  an  unconciliatory  attitude,  Joseph  would  have  had 
a  good  excuse  for  trying  to  nationalise  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  in  Austria  and  to  assert  its  independence  of  Rome. 
He  always  supported  the  Bishops  whenever  they  were  in 
opposition  to  the  Pope,  and  he  exacted  from  them  an  oath  to 
the  Emperor  which  bound  them  not  to  do  anything  contrary 
to  the  interests  of  the  State. 

Such  being  Joseph’s  attitude  towards  the  Church,  it  is 
hardly  remarkable  to  find  that  under  his  rule  Austria  was 
well  ahead  of  the  rest  of  Europe  in  the  matter  of  religious 
toleration.  This  had  not  been  so  under  Maria  Theresa.  Her 
devotion  and  her  real  piety  included  not  a  little  of  the  spirit 
of  bigotry  and  intolerance.  Her  hand  had  fallen  very  heavily 
upon  the  Protestants.  They  were  excluded  from  all  offices, 
not  allowed  to  have  freedom  of  worship,  except  in  Hungary 
where  they  were  very  numerous,  over  three  millions,  and  they 
had  to  have  their  marriages  blessed  by  a  Roman  Catholic 
priest;  and  Joseph  had  great  difficulty  in  checking  a  fierce 
persecution  of  the  Moravian  converts  to  Protestantism  in  1  777. 
The  condition  of  the  Jews  was  even  worse:  they  were  not 
allowed  to  own  houses  in  Vienna,  and  the  Ordinance  of  the 
Jews  of  1753  imposed  upon  them  a  series  of  restrictions  of  a 
similarly  galling  nature. 

But  under  Joseph  things  were  very  different.  Lutherans, 
Calvinists  and  the  Greek  Church  enjoyed  freedom  to  worship, 
might  build  prayer-houses  and  schools,  own  land  and  houses, 
enter  the  professions  and  hold  municipal,  civil  and  military 
offices.  Thus  it  was  hardly  wonderful  that  the  Protestants 
in  Austria,  who  had  only  numbered  74,000  in  1782,  had 
reached  1  57,000  in  1787,  many  who  had  conformed  outwardly 
to  Roman  Catholicism  now  professing  their  real  beliefs.  The 
Jews  also  shared  in  the  benefit  of  Joseph’s  reforms.  To 
make  them  more  useful  citizens  he  removed  some  restrictions, 
allowing  them  to  attend  schools  and  universities,  and  giving 
them  some  measure  of  freedom.  This  toleration  was  not 
shared  by  all  Joseph’s  Ministers.  It  was  most  distasteful  to 
Hatzfeldt,  the  President  of  the  Council  of  State,  and  Bliimegen 
(Court  Chancellor),  while  a  good  many  more  officials,  notably 


334  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1770- 


in  Bohemia,  were  dismissed  on  account  of  their  persistent 
opposition  to  the  policy.  But  while  Joseph  thus  did  much 
which  provoked  the  opposition  of  the  Church,  it  would 
be  most  unjust  to  regard  him  as  its  enemy.  He  was 
a  Catholic  and  not  an  Atheist,  he  was  not  even  a  Free¬ 
mason  or  a  “  Voltairian.”  If  he  freed  education  from  Church 
control  and  made  it  secular,  if  he  made  the  State  altogether 
independent  of  the  Church,  it  was  because  he  sought  the 
good  of  the  State,  that  wider  whole  of  which  the  Church 
formed  a  part. 

In  other  directions  Joseph  took  up  and  extended  the 
reforms  initiated  by  Maria  Theresa.  In  codifying  the  civil 
and  criminal  law,  in  introducing  greater  simplicity  into  the 
laws  relating  to  marriages  (published  1783)  and  to  suc¬ 
cession  and  inheritance  (1786),  he  did  good  work.  The 
property  law  of  1786  and  the  penal  code  of  1787  show 
a  distinct  advance  and  are  quite  modern.  Much  that  was 
barbarous  was  removed  from  the  penal  code ;  the  property 
of  a  person  under  a  charge  but  as  yet  unconvicted  was 
respected  ;  duelling  was  treated  as  murder. 

In  another  sphere  Joseph  had  pushed  on  further  even  in 
Maria  Theresa’s  lifetime  than  she  was  herself  prepared  to  go. 
This  was  the  agrarian  question.  Maria  Theresa  was  sincerely 
anxious  for  the  well-being  of  the  peasantry,  to  protect  them 
against  oppression  and  undue  exactions  on  the  part  of  their 
lords,  but  she  herself  was  at  heart  one  of  the  old  aristocracy 
of  Austria.  With  her,  good  treatment  of  the  lower  orders 
was  a  matter  of  the  heart,  not,  as  with  Joseph,  of  the  head, 
an  obligation  which  the  ruler  must  observe,  not  a  right  which 
the  subjects  could  demand.  She  was  utterly  untouched  by 
the  theories  and  principles  which  dominated  him.  However, 
she  made  no  opposition  to  his  schemes  for  the  regulation  of 
the  “  Robot.” 1  The  condition  of  the  peasantry  differed 
considerably  with  the  provinces.  In  the  Sclavonic  lands 
they  were  much  worse  off  than  in  the  German  districts ;  in 
Hungary  they  were  unfree,  and  weighed  down  by  heavy 
burdens  which  the  lesser  nobility  among  the  Magyars  stoutly 
defended  against  Joseph’s  efforts  to  remove  them.  In  Austria 
itself  and  in  Tyrol  the  peasantry  were  best  off,  though  the 
Bohemian  nobles  were  the  best  farmers  and  landowners  in  the 

1  Services  due  from  the  peasants  to  the  landowners. 


i79°]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  JOSEPH  II 


335 


Hapsburg  dominions,  and  did  much  to  improve  their  estates 
and  the  conditions  under  which  their  tenantry  existed,  re¬ 
building  villages,  draining  swamps  and  looking  after  the 
forests.  In  the  lands  along  the  Drave  the  peasantry  were 
attached  to  the  soil,  but  enjoyed  a  fair  amount  of  personal 
freedom.  They  could  acquire  personal  property  and  dispose 
of  it  by  will,  and  were  not  fettered  by  restrictions  as  to 
marriage.  In  Carinthia  and  Styria  only  Catholics  were 
allowed  to  own  houses  and  the  population  was  as  a  whole 
backward,  though  cases  occurred  of  peasants  leaving  as  large 
a  fortune  as  30,000  gulden. 

The  chief  aims  of  Joseph’s  reforms  were  the  abolition  of 
serfdom,  or,  where  he  could  not  actually  effect  this,  to  render 
fixed  and  definite  the  uncertain  claims  of  the  lords.  His  first 
efforts  in  these  directions  provoked  strenuous  opposition  on 
the  part  of  the  Estates,  and  even  to  some  extent  from  the 
administration,  which  in  composition  and  in  sympathies  was 
very  largely  aristocratic.  In  1770  an  Ordinance  was  published 
for  Bohemia,  which  forbade  the  lords  to  forestall  or  to  press 
labour  or  exact  dues  on  marriages  or  on  the  purchase  of  land 
by  their  tenants.  After  much  opposition  and  trouble  it  was 
decided  that  the  matter  should  be  left  to  be  settled  by  arrange¬ 
ment  between  the  lords  and  their  subjects  ;  but  though  this  was 
done  on  the  Royal  domains,  elsewhere  it  remained  for  the 
most  part  a  dead  letter,  with  the  result  that  in  1775  the 
peasants,  losing  all  hope  of  getting  relief  by  any  other  way, 
endeavoured  to  extort  it  by  an  insurrection.  The  troops, 
however,  were  quite  untouched  by  popular  sympathies  and 
the  revolt  was  suppressed  without  difficulty. 

In  no  way  deterred  by  this  revolt,  Joseph  pushed  on  with 
his  schemes  of  agrarian  reform.  He  regarded  those  who 
had  opposed  his  measures  as  responsible  for  the  rising,  and 
in  August  1775  he  induced  Maria  Theresa  to  grant  a 
“  Robot  patent  ”  by  which  the  services  due  were  fixed  so 
as  not  to  exceed  three  days’  work  a  week,  while  it  was 
possible  to  commute  this  for  money  or  produce  on  a  settled 
system.  The  relative  contributions  of  the  vassal  and  the 
lord  to  the  land-tax  were  also  fixed,  and  in  1778  a  supple¬ 
mentary  edict  defined  the  normal  “  Robot  ”  as  two  days. 
Altogether  this  was  a  marked  advance  on  previous  conditions, 
but  Joseph  was  not  content.  Soon  after  he  became  sole 


336  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1770- 


ruler,  he  published  an  edict  abolishing  personal  serfdom 
(Jan.  15th,  1781).  The  sixth  article  of  this  document 
promised  the  peasants  freedom  to  marry  as  they  would, 
freedom  to  move  their  residence,  the  right  to  the  products 
of  their  labour,  and  abolished  several  other  of  the  more 
oppressive  “  incidents  ”  of  their  vassalage.  However,  the 
peasant  was  not  even  now  withdrawn  from  all  dependence 
on  the  lord.  He  was  still  responsible  to  him,  attended 
at  his  court,  and  had  to  perform  the  services  due  according 
to  the  “  Robot,”  unless  he  had  already  commuted  them.  But 
these  services  were  now  fixed,  and  the  peasantry  could 
obtain  legal  redress  in  cases  of  infringement  of  the  arrange¬ 
ments.  In  September  1781  another  edict  greatly  reduced  the 
criminal  jurisdiction  of  the  lords,  and  took  the  peasantry 
under  the  protection  of  the  State,  which  appointed  public 
advocates  in  all  the  provinces  to  act  as  counsel  for  the 
peasants.  The  result  of  these  reforms  is  well  summed  up 
by  Wolf.1  “Before  the  time  of  Joseph  II,  the  peasantry 
formed  a  class  of  the  people:  after  Joseph  they  were  again 
an  estate  (Stand),  with  public  rights  and  duties.” 

Closely  connected  with  all  this  was  the  reassessment  of 
the  land-tax,  for  Joseph  was  most  anxious  to  reduce  the 
burden  on  the  peasants,  declaring  that  unless  the  peasantry 
were  prosperous  the  kingdom  could  not  be.  It  was  a  work 
of  great  difficulty,  for  when  a  reassessment  was  ordered  in 
April  1785  nobles,  clergy,  Estates  and  even  many  of  the 
ministers  themselves  protested  and  offered  all  the  opposition 
they  could.  In  September  1789,  however,  the  new  rates 
were  published.  Houses  were  to  pay  10  per  cent,  of  their 
rent,  agricultural  land  12J  per  cent,  of  its  gross  produce, 
the  communities  being  made  responsible  for  the  tax.  The 
peasantry  had  in  addition  to  pay  ij\  per  cent,  to  their 
landlords.  But  this  system  proved  a  failure.  The  work 
had  been  done  rather  too  hastily  and  had  been  somewhat 
scamped,  the  rate  being  fixed  a  good  deal  too  high ;  and 
as  the  whole  plan  was  most  unpopular  Leopold  I  rescinded 
it  on  his  accession. 

It  was  not  merely  over  these  matters  of  the  position  of 
the  peasantry  and  over  the  land-tax  that  Joseph  came  into 
collision  with  the  nobility,  who  still  held  a  most  important 

1  P.  287. 


MARIA  THERESA  AND  JOSEPH  II 


337 


1 79°] 

and  influential  position  in  the  Hapsburg  dominions.  They 
still  retained  under  their  control,  minor  justice,  police  and 
the  supervision  of  the  schools,  they  had  great  power  and 
influence  locally,  they  had  never  been  detached  from  the 
land  and  made  mere  satellites  of  the  Court  as  their  con¬ 
temporaries  in  France  had  been.  Moreover,  they  had  in 

the  Estates  of  the  various  provinces  a  constitutional  means 
of  making  their  views  known,  so  that  the  efforts  which 

Joseph  made  at  every  favourable  opportunity  to  restrict  the 
sphere  of  activity  of  the  Estates  were  really  attacks  on 
the  aristocratic  element  in  the  government  and  constitution. 
His  great  idea  was  to  promote  the  happiness  of  the  many 
by  diminishing  the  powers  of  the  few,  and  it  was  with  this 
object  that  he  attacked  social  and  fiscal  privileges,  as  in 

the  matter  of  the  “  robot  ”  and  land-tax  or  the  political 

powers  of  the  nobles,  as  in  forbidding  in  1782  all  payments 
by  the  Estates  which  the  government  had  not  authorised. 
But  this  policy  was  far  from  being  popular,  even  with  those 
most  closely  associated  with  the  Emperor  and  holding 
the  principal  offices  under  him.  Zinzendorf,  then  President 
of  the  Debt  Commission  ( Hofrechenkamtner ),  declared  in 
February  1787  that  neither  the  ministers  nor  the  Council 
of  State  were  competent  to  decide  upon  a  new  system  of 
taxation,  and  that  it  should  be  referred  to  an  assembly  of 
“  Notables.”  Joseph  accordingly  sought  to  recruit  his 
bureaucracy  independently  of  class  distinctions ;  but  while 
the  bureaucrats  too  often  displayed  a  want  of  the  zeal, 
single-mindedness  and  self-sacrifice  which  Joseph  somewhat 
over-confidently  expected,  the  Emperor  was  much  at  fault 
in  seeking  to  impose  on  Austria  a  system  she  was  not 
fitted  to  receive.  Conscious  of  his  own  sincerity  and  of 
his  zeal  for  the  welfare  of  his  subjects,  Joseph  could  not 
understand  that  the  old  distinctions  of  provinces  and  classes 
which  he  yearned  to  sweep  away,  the  old  constitutional 
forms  and  rights  which  marred  the  completeness  of  his 
bureaucratic  absolutism  and  in  which  he  could  only  see  the 
obsolete  relics  of  an  unenlightened  past,  did  not  appear  in 
the  same  light  to  other  people,  that  it  was  possible  to  differ 
from  him  and  his  policy  honestly  and  without  bad  motives. 
Thus  it  was  that  he  failed  to  appreciate  the  opposition  he 
aroused,  sought  to  override  rather  than  to  conciliate  it,  out- 


22 


338  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1770- 


stripped  even  those  of  his  ministers  and  subjects  who  on 
the  whole  approved  of  his  policy,  never  gave  his  measures 
time  to  live  down  opposition  by  successful  working,  and  was 
always  “  taking  the  second  step  before  the  first.” 

Joseph,  indeed,  was  by  no  means  as  absolute  and  autocratic 
as  was,  for  example,  his  neighbour  Frederick  II.  In  Austria 
the  personality  of  the  ministers  still  was  of  great  importance, 
especially  when  there  was  among  them  such  a  man  as  Kaunitz. 
President  of  the  Council  of  State,  Chancellor,  Minister  of  the 
Interior,1  he  exercised  an  enormous  influence  over  domestic 
and  foreign  affairs'  alike.  Methodical,  precise,  a  trifle  slow,  he 
was  quite  the  reverse  of  the  more  erratic  and  impetuous  Joseph  ; 
and  on  many  points,  notably  the  treatment  of  Hungary  and 
the  Netherlands,  they  were  at  variance,  while  Kaunitz  clung 
with  the  utmost  tenacity  to  the  system  of  foreign  policy  he 
had  introduced  in  1756;  and  not  until  the  French  Revolution 
had  developed  into  a  danger  to  all  Europe,  and  Frederick  II 
was  dead,  did  he  so  far  overcome  his  habitual  distrust  of 
Prussia  as  to  advocate  an  alliance  with  the  Court  of  Berlin. 

No  one  else  among  the  Austrian  ministers  could  compare 
in  authority  with  Kaunitz.  Henry  Blumegen,  Court  Chancellor 
from  1771  to  1781;  Leopold  Kolowrat,  his  successor  in  that 
office ;  Count  Seilern,  the  Minister  of  Justice ;  Rudolf  Chotek, 
nephew  of  Maria  Theresa’s  Minister  and  assistant  to  Kolowrat 
till  1789,  were  all  thoroughly  competent  as  subordinates,  but 
not  capable  of  doing  much  independently.  Trained  for  the 
most  part  in  the  Theresian  school,  they  tended  to  be  con¬ 
servative :  Blumegen  resigned  when,  in  1781,  Joseph  united 
the  financial  and  political  administration  ;  Chotek,  though  a 
strong  advocate  of  the  supremacy  of  the  Crown,  was  too  much 
of  an  aristocrat  to  accept  the  abolition  of  serfdom  :  lie  resigned 
in  1789  as  a  protest  against  the  new  system  of  taxation. 
Zinzendorf,  a  man  of  great  financial  and  commercial  know¬ 
ledge,  and  a  keen  supporter  of  Joseph’s  Church  policy,  disliked 
the  agrarian  reforms  and  was  much  opposed  to  the  suppression 
of  all  constitutional  forms.  Kolowrat,  Zinzcndorf’s  predecessor 
as  President  of  the  Debt  Commission  (1771  to  1782)  and 
subsequently  Director  of  the  united  financial  and  political 
administration,  had  strong  aristocratic  and  constitutional 
sympathies  which  made  him  a  half-hearted  agent  for  Joseph. 

1  Wolf,  p.  224. 


i79o]  MARIA  THERESA  AND  JOSEPH  II 


339 


Moreover,  Joseph  was  not  able  to  allay  the  rising  discon¬ 
tent  by  the  most  effective  of  all  palliatives,  reduction  of 
taxation.  His  reforms  were  for  the  most  part  expensive :  a 
bureaucracy,  especially  if  it  is  to  be  honest  and  efficient,  must 
be  adequately  paid  ;  it  was  impossible  to  cut  down  the  sums 
devoted  to  the  army,  and  with  hospitals,  sanitation  and 
charitable  institutions  all  making  great  demands  Joseph  had 
rather  to  increase  than  to  diminish  taxation.  He  also  sought 
to  readjust  the  burden,  as,  for  example,  by  reassessing  the  land- 
tax,  and  so  make  it  easier  to  be  borne,  and  to  increase  the 
tax-producing  capacities  of  his  dominions  by  public  works, 
by  fostering  industries  and  manufactures,  and  by  encouraging 
trade.  Under  Zinzendorf  as  Governor  Trieste  made  great 
progress:  in  1782  it  had  an  import  trade  of  8 J  million  gulden 
and  exported  1  3  millions’  worth.  In  1 790  the  number  of  vessels 
visiting  the  port  had  risen  from  the  4300  of  1782  to  6750 
6  per  cent,  being  Austrian.  However,  on  the  whole  Joseph’s 
efforts  to  make  income  and  expenditure  balance  were  not 
very  successful.  Whenever  careful  economy  had  produced  a 
surplus,  some  shift  of  foreign  policy  was  sure  to  swallow 
it  up  and  leave  a  considerable  deficit.  Thus  in  1783 
the  revenue  reached  78,000,000  gulden  and  exceeded  the 
expenses  by  nearly  four  millions ;  but  the  question  of  the 
Scheldt  sent  up  the  outgoings  to  84  millions,  87  millions  and 
85}  millions  in  the  next  three  years.  In  1787  there  was 
again  a  surplus,  the  revenue  reaching  92  millions,  the  expendi¬ 
ture  85  but  the  Turkish  War  proved  most  costly,  and  at 
Joseph’s  death  there  was  a  deficit  of  nearly  28  millions  and  a 
debt  of  no  less  than  370.  Still  he  did  effect  great  reforms  in 
the  financial  administration,  swept  away  a  great  many  obsolete 
and  unnecessary  posts,  allowed  several  unproductive  old  taxes 
to  expire,  and  found  new  sources  of  revenue  in  stamps,  news¬ 
papers  and  the  tobacco  monopoly.  Tariff  reform  was  another 
important  sphere  in  which  Joseph  did  good  work,  although  he 
failed  to  get  rid  of  the  customs-boundary  between  Austria  and 
Hungary.  He  was  a  strong  Protectionist,  and  the  tariff  of 
1784  was  mainly  designed  to  keep  out  foreign  competition, 
though  subsequently  it  underwent  considerable  modifications. 

Joseph’s  difficulties,  great  enough  when  confined  to  the 
problems  arising  out  of  Austria,  Bohemia  and  their 
dependencies,  were  multiplied  enormously  by  Hungarian 


340  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1786- 


autonomy,  and  by  the  resistance  of  the  Netherlands  to  the 
reforms  he  sought  to  introduce  into  that  isolated  portion  of  his 
dominions.  In  both  these  countries,  reforms  were  urgently 
needed,  but  in  both  the  old  constitutional  forms  were  strong 
enough  to  serve  as  the  nucleus  for  the  resistance  of  all  those 
vested  interests  which  Joseph  had  attacked  and  offended. 

The  Netherlands  were,  as  a  rule,  governed  by  some  member 
of  the  Imperial  family,  assisted  by  a  Minister  Plenipotentiary. 
Up  till  1780  Charles  of  Lorraine  acted  as  Stadtholder,  and  on 
his  death  Albert  of  Saxe-Teschen  and  his  wife,  the  Arch¬ 
duchess  Marie  Christina,  youngest  daughter  of  Maria  Theresa, 
succeeded  to  the  office;  but  Joseph  treated  them  more  as 
representatives  of  the  dynasty  than  as  responsible  for  the 
government,  which  was  mainly  in  the  hands  of  Count  George 
Adam  Stahremberg.  The  latter,  however,  resigned  in  1783  as 
he  found  his  advice  neglected  by  the  Emperor,  and  Count 
Belgiojoso  succeeded  him. 

The  reforms  which  Joseph  proposed  to  introduce  into  the 
Netherlands  were  of  much  the  same  kind  as  those  attempted 
in  Austria.  Trade  was  in  a  bad  condition,  owing  largely  to 
the  closing  of  the  Scheldt,1  the  administration  was  neither  very 
efficient  nor  very  honest,  justice  was  proverbially  tedious,  the 
economic  and  social  condition  of  the  country  unsatisfactory, 
the  defences  inefficient,  and  the  Church  wealthy  and  influential. 
It  was  the  Church,  therefore,  that  Joseph  first  attacked.  He 
applied  to  the  monks  in  the  Netherlands  the  same  measures  as 
he  had  applied  in  Austria  (1782),  and  with  fair  success;  for 
while  the  clergy  offered  bitter  opposition,  the  mass  of  the 
people  acquiesced.  In  1786  further  trouble  was  caused  by 
the  foundation  of  a  Seminary  at  Louvain  to  give  the  clergy 
a  rather  more  liberal  education  than  that  which  they  were 
receiving  in  the  Episcopal  schools.  This  measure  the  Papal 
Nuntio,  Zondaderi,  and  the  Archbishop  of  Malines,  Count 
Frankenberg,  resisted  so  stoutly  that  the  latter  had  to  be 
recalled  to  Vienna  and  the  former  sent  back  to  Rome.  Thus 
Joseph  alienated  the  clergy  completely,  while  the  provinces  as 
a  whole,  disappointed  at  the  failure  of  his  efforts  to  free  the 
Scheldt,  had  not  appreciated  the  proposed  exchange  against 
Bavaria,  and  not  unreasonably  cared  but  little  about  a  ruler 
who  admittedly  wanted  to  get  rid  of  them.  Accordingly,  when 

1  Cf.  p.  322. 


1788]  MARTA  THERESA  AND  JOSEPH  II 


34i 


in  January  1787  Joseph  published  edicts  abolishing  the 
Council  of  State,  the  Privy  Council,  the  Secretariat  and  the 
Financial  Council,  which  were  all  to  be  replaced  by  a  Council 
of  the  Governor-General  of  the  Netherlands,  remodelling  the 
judicial  arrangements  completely,  taking  away  the  privileges 
and  special  jurisdictions  of  the  nobility,  dissolving  the  old  pro¬ 
vincial  boundaries  and  constitutions  and  dividing  the  land  into 
nine  “  Circles”  each  under  an  Intendant,  it  was  the  clergy  who 
fanned  the  flame  of  discontent  into  resistance. 

Joseph’s  proposals  aimed  at  unity,  coherence  and  centrali¬ 
sation  of  administration  ;  but  the  Belgians  adhered  to  their 
cherished  autonomy  and  regarded  the  establishment  of  abso¬ 
lutism  as  a  tyrannical  outrage.  They  preferred  their  feudal  and 
federal  arrangements,  even  if  they  were  in  Joseph’s  eyes  quite 
indefensible.  Moreover,  equality  before  the  law  was  a  breach 
of  each  man’s  rights  to  the  privileges  of  his  class  ;  the  burghers 
hated  the  conscription  and  the  Austrian  criminal  procedure, 
and  the  nobles  were  especially  hostile  to  the  scheme. 
When  the  Estates  of  Brabant  met  (April  1787)  the  opposition 
soon  found  its  voice  and  gave  vent  in  no  measured  terms  to 
its  disapproval  of  the  new  measures.  Belgiojoso  was  vigorously 
denounced  ;  and  the  Viceroys,  after  vainly  trying  to  quell  the 
discontent,  were  compelled  to  withdraw  the  obnoxious  edicts 
and  cancel  the  new  arrangements  in  order  to  avert  an  actual 
outbreak  (May  30th).  Joseph,  however,  determined  to  persist, 
and  to  overcome  opposition  by  force  if  necessary.  Convinced 
as  he  was  of  the  excellence  of  his  reforms,  and  that  they  could 
not  fail  to  prove  beneficial,  he  could  not  conceive  that  honest 
opposition  could  be  offered  to  them  and  totally  failed  to  com¬ 
prehend  the  feelings  of  his  Belgian  subjects.  Much  against 
the  advice  of  Kaunitz  he  refused  to  make  any  concessions, 
replaced  Belgiojoso  by  Trautmansdorf,  and  gave  the  command 
in  the  Netherlands  to  d’Alton,  superseding  General  Murray, 
who  had  hitherto  averted  a  conflict  by  concessions,  notably  by 
withdrawing  the  troops  from  Brussels. 

With  Trautmansdorf  really  in  the  place  of  the  Viceroys 
and  the  rough  and  stern  d’Alton  at  Trautmansdorf’s  elbow, 
the  reign  of  coercion  was  not  far  off.  Nevertheless,  1788  on 
the  whole  passed  off  quietly  enough,  though  arbitrary  arrests, 
the  suppression  of  the  Press,  and  the  prevention  of  public 
meetings  served  rather  to  muzzle  than  to  stamp  out  the 


342  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1789 


spreading  disaffection.  When  the  taxes  for  1789  had  to  be 
voted,  the  first  two  orders  of  the  Estates  of  Brabant  consented 
to  vote  them,  but  the  Third  Estate  refused,  and  its  example 
was  followed  in  Hainault.  Joseph  determined  to  use  force. 
In  June  a  new  ordinance  was  published,  suppressing  the 
Joyeuse  Entree ,  the  principal  charter  of  Belgian  liberties, 
abolishing  the  Council  of  Brabant,1  doing  away  with  the 
Estates,  and  establishing  an  entirely  new  system  of  local 
administration  and  a  new  High  Court  of  Justice.  To  force 
the  Belgians  replied  with  force.  A  Revolutionary  Committee 
assembled  at  Breda  to  direct  the  insurrection,  which  spread 
like  wildfire.  The  troops,  few  in  number  and  somewhat  dis¬ 
affected,  were  unable  to  hold  their  own.  All  Flanders  had 
to  be  evacuated.  Brabant  rose,  and  the  troops  had  to  be 
concentrated  at  Brussels,  and  to  confine  their  efforts  to  holding 
out  there  and  maintaining  the  line  of  communications  by 
Namur  and  Luxembourg.  Two  distinct  parties  were  now 
taking  shape  in  the  insurgent  ranks.  One,  aristocratic  and 
conservative,  led  by  Van  der  Noot,  was  contemplating  ap¬ 
pealing  to  the  Triple  Alliance  to  which  the  recent  (1787) 
intervention  of  England  and  Prussia  in  Holland 2  had  given 
birth.  The  other,  guided  by  the  able  but  uncompromising 
Vonck,  was  frankly  democratic,  and  looked  for  help  to  France, 
where  revolutionary  principles  were  gaining  ground  rapidly ; 
and  it  was  this  party  which  took  the  lead  in  the  attack  on 
the  troops.  The  insurrection  had  occurred  at  a  time  most 
unfavourable  to  Joseph.  He  was  deeply  implicated  in  the 
perennial  Eastern  Question,  and  his  relations  with  the  other 
Powers,  notably  with  Prussia,  were  somewhat  strained.  He 
was  therefore  in  no  position  to  continue  his  coercive  policy, 
especially  as  he  feared  that  Prussia  might  take  the  part  of 
the  insurgents  and  intervene  in  Belgium.  Accordingly  he 
revoked  his  ordinances,  promised  to  dissolve  the  Louvain 
Seminary,  restored  the  Joyeuse  Entr£ey  issued  a  general 
amnesty,  and  sent  the  Vice-Chancellor,  Philip  Cobenzl,  to 
the  Netherlands  (Nov.  26th).  But  these  concessions 
were  interpreted  as  merely  signs  of  weakness,  and  the  in¬ 
surgents,  much  encouraged,  attacked  Brussels  and  forced 

1  The  High  Court  of  Justice,  which  had  important  political  functions  as  guardian 
of  the  constitution. 

2  Cf.  p.  325. 


MARIA  THERESA  AND  JOSEPH  II 


343 


1 79°] 

d’Alton  to  evacuate  it  (Dec.  12  th)  and  fall  back  to 
Luxembourg.  Flushed  with  success,  they  declared  that  the 
Emperor  had  forfeited  his  sovereign  rights,  and  in  January 
1790  deputies  from  the  revolted  provinces  met  at  Brussels 
and  proclaimed  their  independence  as  the  United  States  of 
Belgium.  It  might  have  been  predicted,  however,  that  unless 
one  of  the  Great  Powers  recognised  this  new  State  its  in¬ 
dependent  existence  would  be  shortlived.  France  was  not 
unwilling,  but  the  Belgian  constitution  was  too  aristocratic 
for  her,  and  early  in  1790  France  was  not  in  a  position  to 
take  a  very  active  line  in  foreign  affairs,  while  Prussia  could 
not  act  alone ;  and  though  the  threat  to  recognise  the  Belgian 
Republic  was  an  effective  card  in  the  diplomatic  game,  it  was 
not  very  seriously  intended.  Thus,  though  Joseph  did  not 
live  to  see  it,  as  soon  as  Austria’s  hands  had  been  more 
or  less  freed  by  the  Convention  of  Reichenbach  and  the 
subsequent  Peace  of  Sistova,  the  Belgian  Republic  was  called 
upon  to  defend  itself  and  failed  to  answer  to  the  challenge. 

Belgium,  however,  was  not  the  only  part  of  the  Hapsburg 
dominions  in  which  the  discontent  aroused  by  Joseph’s  reforms 
became  a  really  serious  matter.  Hungary,  despite  the  reforms 
of  Maria  Theresa,  who  had  exercised  a  practically  absolute 
power  over  it  from  1765  to  1780,  was  still  a  feudal  state, 
almost  untouched  by  modern  changes.  Since  1764  no  Diet 
had  been  summoned.  The  office  of  Palatine  had  been  re¬ 
placed  by  those  of  Stadtholder  and  Captain-General,  posts 
conferred  on  Albert  of  Saxe-Teschen  ;  but  Hungary  retained 
a  great  deal  of  autonomy,  the  local  officials  being  for  the 
most  part  elective,  and  the  strength  of  the  lower  nobility 
was  still  very  great.  Moreover,  the  various  abuses  on  which 
Joseph  was  waging  war  everywhere  flourished  with  special 
vigour  in  Hungary.  The  judicial  system  was  obsolete, 
education  in  the  hands  of  a  wealthy  but  rather  ignorant 
clergy,  the  nobles  controlled  the  government  and  did  nothing, 
the  peasants  were  unfree  and  weighed  down  with  heavy 
burdens.  Here  as  elsewhere  the  Church  was  the  first  in¬ 
stitution  to  experience  Joseph’s  attacks;  but  though  the 
granting  of  toleration  to  Jews  and  Protestants,  the  suppression 
of  the  monasteries  and  the  exaction  of  a  new  oath  from  the 
Bishops  were  all  declared  to  be  breaches  of  the  constitution, 
they  were  as  a  whole  accepted  quietly  enough,  and  it  was  not 


344  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1785- 


till  after  Joseph’s  visit  to  Hungary  in  1784  that  trouble  really 
began. 

To  a  proud  and  sensitive  race  like  the  Magyars  it  was  an 
insult  that  German  should  have  been  proclaimed  to  be  the 
official  language,  as  was  done  in  1784,  another  decree 
announcing  that  in  future  only  German-speaking  persons 
would  be  appointed  to  official  posts.  An  even  more  serious 
grievance  was  Joseph’s  interference  in  the  social  and  economic 
arrangements  of  the  country.  In  August  1785  an  edict  was 
published  abolishing  serfdom.  It  met  with  bitter  opposition 
from  the  serf-owning  territorial  magnates,  and  as  a  matter  of 
fact  remained  a  dead  letter.  In  Transylvania  the  disappoint¬ 
ment  of  the  peasants  resulted  in  a  social  rising  which  developed 
into  a  “Jacquerie.”  Many  landowners  were  murdered,  many 
castles  and  houses  pillaged  and  burnt  before  the  insurrection 
was  ruthlessly  and  sternly  repressed.  Both  sides  put  the 
blame  on  Joseph.  The  peasants  felt  that  he  had  deserted 
them  and  had  not  fulfilled  his  promises :  the  nobles  looked 
on  his  reforms  as  the  cause  of  the  trouble  and  were  indignant 
with  his  leniency  towards  the  insurgents.  But  further  measures 
were  to  come,  amounting  to  a  widespreading  alteration  of 
the  constitution,  including  the  re-division  of  the  land  into 
ten  Circles,  each  under  a  Commissary,  a  royal  official  who  was 
to  be  responsible  for  public  order,  for  raising  taxes,  levying 
recruits  and  similar  work.  This  was  an  interference  with 
local  government,  hitherto  the  province  of  the  nobles,  higher 
and  lower,  and  caused  much  dissatisfaction.  But  Joseph  paid 
no  heed  to  the  rising  opposition,  nor  attempted  in  the  least  to 
conciliate  it  or  to  give  his  reforms  time  to  make  themselves 
more  acceptable  in  practice.  He  hurried  on  from  one  reform 
to  another.  The  conscription,  introduced  in  1  785,  was  bitterly 
resented  as  an  attempt  to  supersede  the  national  “  Insurrection.” 
A  census  was  taken  in  1785  as  the  preliminary  to  a  reform 
of  the  land-tax,  from  which  by  the  rescript  of  February  10th, 
1786,  nobles  and  clergy  were  to  be  no  longer  exempt. 
In  December  1786  an  Imperial  rescript  announced  a  complete 
change  in  the  administration  which  would  have  the  effect  of 
subjecting  it  completely  to  the  Emperor’s  control. 

However,  foreign  complications  made  it  impossible  to  put 
all  these  new  arrangements  into  force.  The  outbreak  of  the 
Turkish  War,  actually  begun  in  December  1787,  though  not 


1 79°] 


MARIA  THERESA  AND  JOSEPH  II 


345 


formally  declared  till  February  1788,  made  it  necessary  to 
demand  a  vote  of  men  and  money,  and  in  Hungary  the 
principle  that  “  redress  of  grievances  should  precede  supply  ” 
was  well  understood.  The  nobles  and  the  other  bodies  to 
which  the  Emperor  applied  demanded  that  the  Diet  should 
be  summoned.  Joseph  steadily  refused,  fearing  that  the  Diet 
would  be  more  than  he  could  control.  Opposition  accordingly 
grew  stronger,  and  so  did  the  pressure  of  the  financial  needs. 
Moreover,  as  in  old  days,  there  was  a  small  party  in  Hungary 
which  was  ready  to  appeal  to  external  assistance  against  the 
sovereign.  The  quarter  to  which  this  section  looked  was  no 
longer  Constantinople  but  Berlin.  Frederick  William  II  when 
invited  to  guarantee  the  freedom  of  Hungary  did  not  show 
himself  prepared  to  go  quite  to  that  length.  He  and  his 
influential  minister,  Hertzberg,  were  glad  to  use  the  threat 
of  supporting  discontent  in  Hungary  to  forward  their  objects 
on  the  Vistula,  but  they  had  no  intention  of  going  any  further. 
Moreover,  Hungary  as  a  whole  was  quite  loyal  to  the  dynasty  ; 
the  cause  of  discontent  was  the  reforms  which  might  be  with¬ 
drawn,  there  was  no  real  wish  for  independence.  However, 
the  danger  of  Prussian  intervention  added  yet  another  anxiety 
to  the  load  of  troubles  under  which  Joseph  was  fast  giving 
way.  Bitterly  disappointed  as  he  was  at  the  results  of  his 
well-meant  reforms,  at  the  ingratitude  with  which  his  efforts 
for  the  good  of  his  subjects  had  been  met,  at  the  failure  of 
his  schemes  for  the  revival  of  the  Empire  and  of  his  ambitious 
foreign  policy  in  general,  his  health,  never  of  the  best,  was 
breaking  down  completely.  It  was  a  final  blow  that  in 
January  1790  he  found  himself  obliged  to  concede  almost 
all  that  Hungary  demanded.  He  cancelled  his  reforms  and 
restored  the  old  arrangements,  but  even  now  he  refused  to 
call  a  Diet.  Whether  he  would  have  had  to  do  so  in  the 
end  is  a  question  which  his  death  (Feb.  20th)  left  un¬ 
answered. 

Many  different  verdicts  have  been  pronounced  on  Joseph  II. 
If  he  was  deficient  in  judgment  and  in  the  power  of  suiting 
his  policy  to  his  circumstances,  if  he  failed  to  appreciate 
the  ideas  of  his  subjects  or  to  make  allowances  for  their 
prejudices,  there  are  few  monarchs  of  whom  it  can  so  con¬ 
fidently  be  asserted  that  their  chief  care  was  the  public  good, 
and  fewer  still  who  have  been  so  consistently  unfortunate. 


346  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1790 


He  set  up  a  high  ideal  of  duty,  and  practically  killed  himself 
in  trying  to  carry  out  a  policy  which  was  dictated  by  the 
best  motives.  Shortlived  as  were  many  of  his  reforms, 
unsuccessful  as  were  many  of  his  schemes,  he  yet  did  ac¬ 
complish  much.  He  got  rid  of  much  that  was  effete  and 
obsolete,  aroused  a  new  spirit  in  Austria,  and  enunciated 
principles  on  which  others  were  to  base  their  work. 


CHAPTER  XVII 


LEOPOLD  II  AND  THE  EASTERN  QUESTION 

LEOPOLD,  the  third  son  of  Maria  Theresa,  was  forty-three 
years  of  age  when  Joseph’s  death  called  him  from 
Florence  to  Vienna.  In  1765  he  had  been  given  his  father’s 
Grand  Duchy  of  Tuscany  of  which  he  had  taken  over  the 
direct  rule  in  1770,  it  having  till  then  been  in  the  hands  of  the 
Marquis  Botta  d’Adorno  and,  since  1 776,  of  Count  Orsini- 
Rosenberg.  Under  Leopold’s  rule,  Tuscany  had  been  orderly, 
peaceful  and  prosperous ;  and  he  had  carried  out,  though  on  a 
smaller  scale  and  with  rather  more  success,  much  the  same 
measures  of  domestic  reform  that  Joseph  II  had  attempted  in 
Austria.  Where,  however,  Leopold  differed  from  Joseph  was 
in  possessing  strong  constitutionalist  sympathies,  which  enabled 
him  to  appreciate  far  more  fairly  the  opposition  which  Joseph 
could  not  understand.  Though  admirably  loyal  to  Joseph,  he 
felt  that  his  brother  had  gone  too  far  in  the  matter  of  Hungary, 
and  he  was  inclined  to  make  really  considerable  concessions 
to  the  Belgian  insurgents.  To  coercion  and  arbitrary  action 
he  was  on  principle  opposed,  for  he  looked  upon  monarchs  as 
delegates  and  representatives  of  their  subjects ;  indeed,  he  had 
gone  so  far  as  to  contemplate  the  introduction  into  Tuscany  of 
some  form  of  representative  government,  but  had  abandoned 
the  project  on  account  of  the  lukewarmness  of  the  nobility  and 
the  obstructionist  attitude  of  the  clergy. 

Leopold  came  to  the  Austrian  throne  with  the  fixed 
determination  to  make  peace  as  soon  as  possible,  since  he  saw 
that  it  was  badly  wanted  and  was  an  essential  preliminary  to 
putting  the  internal  affairs  of  his  dominions  on  a  sound  basis. 
Moreover,  it  was  clear  that  the  Turkish  war  was  not  by  any 
means  the  “walk  over”  for  which  Joseph  II  had  hoped,  and 
that,  in  view  of  Prussia’s  evident  hostility,  Austria  would  do 
well  to  make  peace  before  she  suffered  any  serious  disaster  on 
the  Danube.  Already  Austria  had  been  forced  to  mass  nearly 


347 


348  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1790 


1  50,000  men  on  the  frontiers  of  Poland  and  Prussia,  and  on 
March  29th,  1790,  Hertzberg  completed  the  negotiation  of  a 
treaty  with  Poland  by  which  Prussia  promised  in  return  for 
Dantzic  and  Thorn  to  obtain  Galicia  from  Austria  for  Poland, 
guaranteed  the  Polish  constitution  and  pledged  herself  to  assist 
Poland,  if  she  were  attacked,  with  1  8,000  men.  This  treaty 
was  certainly  a  breach  of  Prussia’s  engagements  to  Austria  and 
Russia,  but  its  provisions  were  never  carried  into  effect.  In  the 
first  place,  financial  considerations  made  it  impossible  for 
Prussia  to  act  without  the  support  of  the  Maritime  Powers,  and 
they  were  anxious  for  peace,  more  especially  as  Leopold  had 
hinted  to  England  that  unless  he  got  help  somewhere  he  would 
have  to  surrender  Belgium  to  France.  Pitt  had  no  liking  for 
the  ambitious  and  aggressive  policy  of  Frederick  William,  and 
the  maintenance  of  Austrian  authority  in  Belgium  was  one  of 
the  cardinal  points  of  his  policy,  so  that  Leopold’s  overtures 
were  well  received,  and  when  two  Austrian  envoys  arrived  at  the 
Prussian  headquarters  at  Reichenbach  (June  26th,  1790)  the 
ministers  of  the  Maritime  Powers  insisted  on  being  present  at 
the  conference  and  pronounced  decisively  in  favour  of  the 
maintenance  of  existing  arrangements.  Hertzberg’s  schemes 
were  thus  completely  upset.  Moreover,  Frederick  William, 
who  was  so  determined  not  to  be  the  tool  of  his  responsible 
ministers  that  he  was  absolutely  controlled  by  irresponsible 
favourites  like  Lucchesini,  rather  distrusted  Hertzberg  and  was 
already  feeling  a  little  nervous  about  the  spread  of  democratic 
principles  in  France.  Poland  also  would  not  give  up  Dantzic 
and  Thorn  unless  she  got  adequate  compensation,  and  nothing 
short  of  an  overwhelming  defeat  would  induce  Austria  to  give 
up  Galicia.  In  so  unpromising  a  state  of  affairs  Frederick 
William  decided  to  come  to  terms  with  Leopold,  in  whose 
political  creed  hostility  to  Prussia  was  not,  as  it  was  with 
Kaunitz,  the  principal  tenet.  Indeed,  Leopold  had  fathomed 
the  true  condition  of  things  in  Prussia,  and  realising  the  diver¬ 
gence  of  opinion  between  Hertzberg  and  his  master,  with  great 
adroitness  addressed  himself  directly  to  Frederick  William  and 
his  confidants,  Bischoffswerder  and  Lucchesini.  The  result 
was  that  an  agreement  was  soon  reached,  both  monarchs  being 
ready  to  facilitate  the  restoration  of  peace  by  renouncing  all 
idea  of  territorial  gain.  Austria  was  somewhat  loath  to  give 
up  all  her  recent  acquisitions,  especially  as  Alexinez  and  Orsova 


1 790]  LEOPOLD  II  AND  THE  EASTERN  QUESTION  349 


had  been  taken  (April),  and  Clerfayt  had  gained  a  considerable 
victory  over  the  Turks  at  Kolafat  (June  26th).  However, 
Loudoun’s  death  (July  14th)  damped  the  ardour  of  the  bellicose, 
and  so  on  July  27th,  the  same  day  that  Clerfayt  gained 
another  victory  on  the  Danube,  at  Florentin,  the  Treaty  of 
Reichenbach  was  signed.  It  was  really  a  triumph  for  Leopold, 
who  by  clever  diplomacy  escaped  from  a  rather  awkward 
position.  The  Triple  Alliance  guaranteed  the  restoration  of 
Austrian  authority  in  Belgium,  and  promised  to  bring  about 
peace  with  Turkey.  As  to  the  cession  of  Galicia  to  Poland 
not  a  word  was  said,  and  Prussia  had,  for  the  time  being  at  any 
rate,  to  forego  the  coveted  Dantzic.  Frederick  William  also 
pledged  his  support  to  Leopold’s  candidature  for  the  Empire. 
Six  weeks  later  the  armistice  of  Giurgevo  (Sept.  19th)  put 
an  end  to  the  hostilities  between  the  Austrians  and  Turks,  and 
in  December  a  congress  was  opened  at  Sistova  to  settle  the 
terms  of  peace. 

Leopold  was  thus  able  to  devote  his  energies  to  the 
resettlement  of  Hungary  and  to  the  reassertion  of  Austrian 
authority  in  Belgium.  In  Hungary  he  had  a  far  from  easy 
task.  The  whole  country  was  in  a  turbulent  and  disorderly 
condition.  Conciliatory  measures  were  interpreted  as  confes¬ 
sions  of  impotence,  and  when  the  Diet  was  opened  at  Ofen  on 
June  8th  the  most  extravagant  claims  were  advanced  and  a 
strenuous  opposition  offered  to  Leopold’s  proposals.  The  Diet 
actually  went  to  the  length  of  proposing  that  the  constitution 
should  be  guaranteed  by  Prussia  ;  upon  which  Leopold,  who  had 
already  carried  conciliation  to  the  extreme  limit  of  reasonable¬ 
ness,  prepared  to  use  force.  It  was  this  domestic  difficulty, 
however,  which  caused  him  to  modify  his  tone  at  Reichenbach, 
as  Prussia  held  a  strong  card  in  the  diplomatic  game  in  the 
threat  to  acknowledge  the  Belgian  Republic  or  to  assist  the 
Hungarians.  Fortunately  Leopold’s  firmness  produced  the 
desired  result.  The  clergy  and  the  burghers  were  now  on  his 
side,  and  the  Diet,  deprived  of  the  hope  of  Prussian  interven¬ 
tion  by  the  conclusion  of  the  Treaty  of  Reichenbach,  gave  way. 
On  November  1  5  th,  Leopold  was  crowned  at  Pressburg.  This 
did  not  end  all  troubles,  for  the  Diet  went  in  detail  into  the  land 
question,  the  organisation  of  the  administration  and  of  justice, 
and  the  question  of  the  position  of  the  Protestants.  Not  a  jot 
of  their  privileges  and  rights  could  the  nobles  be  induced  to 


350  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1790 


give  up,  and  the  result  was  that  Hungary,  to  which  Joseph’s 
reforms  would  have  opened  the  door  to  progress,  relapsed  into 
and  remained  in  a  condition  of  stagnation.  Though  no  longer 
serfs,  the  peasantry  were  still  unfree.  The  townsfolk  were 
without  power  or  influence.  The  nobles,  free  from  taxation 
and  from  military  service,  retained  their  position  as  a  privileged 
and  dominant  aristocracy.  But  at  this  price  Leopold  had 
succeeded  in  restoring  peace  and  order  to  the  most  troublous 
portion  of  his  dominions.  Had  he  lived  it  is  quite  likely  he 
might  have  attempted,  in  some  form  or  other,  the  much- 
needed  reforms  which  for  the  time  being  he  had  had  to 
sacrifice. 

About  the  same  time  a  Diet  was  held  in  Transylvania. 
Here  the  problems  were  much  simpler.  Things  had  been  at 
once  restored  (March  1790)  to  the  condition  which  had  existed 
before  Joseph’s  innovations,  and  the  Emperor  now  (Feb. 
1791)  decided  upon  the  separation  of  the  Transylvanian  from 
the  Hungarian  Chancery.  He  also  succeeded  despite  the 
opposition  of  the  local  nobility  in  securing  the  abolition  of 
serfdom. 

In  the  case  of  the  Netherlands,  the  chief  danger  was  that 
of  foreign  intervention,  but  the  idea  that  England  would  take 
the  side  of  the  rebels  was  always  a  mere  chimera.  France  was 
too  well  occupied  at  home  to  do  anything,  and  the  Treaty  of 
Reichenbach  removed  all  anxiety  as  to  Prussia,  although  a 
Prussian  officer,  von  Schonfeld,  had  been  given  the  post  of 
commander-in-chief  by  the  Clerical  section  among  the  insur¬ 
gents.  This  party,  led  by  Van  der  Noot,  had  gained  the  upper 
hand  in  a  fierce  struggle  with  the  democratic  section,  the 
Vonckists,  who  were  more  inclined  to  approve  of  the  reforms 
in  general  and  were  therefore  prepared  to  listen  to  the  pacific 
overtures  of  Leopold.  The  Emperor  was  most  anxious  to 
avoid  bloodshed,  but  the  Clericals  would  not  hear  of  a 
compromise.  The  Bishops  preached  a  crusade  against  him, 
and  were  ready  to  throw  themselves  into  the  arms  of  France, 
though  no  help  was  forthcoming  from  that  quarter,  partly 
because  Pitt  had  let  it  be  understood  that  in  case  of  a  French 
intervention  he  would  assist  Austria.  Finally,  in  November, 
no  surrender  having  been  made  by  the  appointed  time  (Nov. 
2 1st),  an  Austrian  corps  of  33,000  men  was  put  in  motion. 
On  the  26th  Namur  fell,  on  the  30th  Brussels  was  reached,  on 


i79°]  LEOPOLD  II  AND  THE  EASTERN  QUESTION  351 


December  2nd  it  opened  its  gates.  Practically  no  resistance 
was  made  and  the  country  as  a  whole  welcomed  the  Emperor’s 
troops.  This  success  was  used  with  the  utmost  mildness. 
Leopold  declined  to  exercise  the  rights  of  a  conqueror.  He 
issued  a  general  amnesty,  dissolved  the  hated  Seminary, 
restored  the  University  of  Louvain,  allowed  the  Church  free 
disposal  of  its  revenues  and  made  no  attempt  to  get  hold  of  the 
ringleaders.  Indeed,  the  Vonckists  were  the  only  people  who 
had  any  cause  to  grumble.  They  had  hoped  to  see  something 
in  the  way  of  democratic  reforms,  and  in  their  disappointment 
they  began  to  plan  a  new  rising,  in  which  they  hoped  for  the 
support  of  France,  now  rapidly  passing  under  the  control  of  the 
democratic  party. 

But  though  the  discontent  excited  by  Joseph’s  well-meant 
reforms  had  nowhere  else  reached  so  high  a  pitch  as  in 
Hungary  and  the  Netherlands,  it  was  by  no  means  non¬ 
existent  in  the  “  hereditary  dominions.”  Leopold  had  begun 
by  repealing  Joseph’s  land-tax  and  new  laws  as  to  land-tenure 
(March  1790).  He  then  summoned  assemblies  in  the  various 
provinces  to  discuss  further  measures.  It  is  interesting  to 
notice  that  while  the  demands  of  the  various  assemblies 
included  a  share  in  legislation  for  the  Estates,  their  general 
tenor  was  retrograde  rather  than  Radical.  They  did  not 
attack  the  absolutist  regime  as  such,  and  where  they  did  desire 
modifications  of  the  existing  state  of  things,  it  was  rather  in 
the  direction  of  feudalism  than  of  democratic  representative 
government.  In  Moravia  1628  was  taken  as  the  golden  time 
to  which  the  Estates  wished  to  return  :  Joseph’s  land-tenure 
system  was  denounced  as  “  derogatory  to  the  nobles  and  the 
State.”  In  Styria  the  nobles  bitterly  opposed  a  proposed 
increase  in  the  representation  of  the  cities.  In  Bohemia  local 
autonomy  was  demanded.  In  Carinthia  the  upper  classes 
condemned  the  encouragement  of  education  as  dangerous  and 
subversive  of  order.  In  Tyrol  alone  it  was  the  peasants 
and  burghers  who  offered  opposition ;  but  Tyrol  was  con¬ 
stitutionally  quite  different  from  the  other  provinces,  and  even 
there  the  demand  was  for  freedom  from  the  conscription  and 
restriction  of  official  posts  to  local  men. 

The  truth  was  that  in  all  these  districts  feudalism  was 
making  a  last  effort  to  assert  itself  against  the  enlightened 
absolutism  which  Maria  Theresa  and  Joseph  had  planted  so 


352  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1790 


strongly  that  it  could  not  be  completely  overthrown.  There 
was  no  feeling  in  favour  of  any  really  constitutional  movement, 
and  Leopold  was  able  to  restore  order  and  reassert  his 
authority  without  abandoning  any  very  valuable  rights.  What 
was  done  in  the  way  of  alteration  or  reform  was  done  by  the 
authority  of  the  head  of  the  State  through  the  bureaucracy, 
which  Leopold  strove  hard  to  keep  up  to  a  high  standard 
of  efficiency. 

The  best  means  of  judging  fairly  the  work  of  Maria 
Theresa  and  her  sons  is  to  compare  the  Austria  of  1792 
with  the  Austria  of  Leopold  I.  In  population  and  material 
prosperity  there  had  been  an  enormous  advance.  Bohemia 
alone  had  2,700,000  inhabitants  as  against  800,000  in  1648. 
Manufactures  and  industry  were  if  anything  too  carefully 
fostered  by  the  State.  If  Joseph  had  not  done  all  he  desired 
for  the  peasantry,  they  and  the  burghers  had  received  consider¬ 
able  encouragement  from  the  efforts  of  their  rulers  on  their 
behalf.  They  had  been  taught  self-respect ;  more  enterprise, 
ambition  and  industry  had  been  instilled  into  them.  The 
Jesuit  monopoly  of  education  had  been  broken  down,  and 
thought  freed  from  the  trammels  hitherto  imposed  on  it.  One 
effect  of  this  was  the  great  intellectual  activity  of  the  period, 
in  literature,  in  the  theatrical  and  musical  worlds.1  In  music 
the  period  was  of  special  importance,  for  Vienna  served  as  a 
half-way  house  between  Italy  and  Northern  Germany.  Mozart 
was  prominent  at  the  Court  of  Maria  Theresa,  Haydn  was  a 
native  of  Lower  Austria,  and  Beethoven  took  up  his  residence 
at  Vienna  in  1792,  and  gave  a  new  impetus  to  musical  life 
there.  It  was  during  this  period  that  Vienna  developed  its 
character  of  a  gay  and  lively  capital,  much  frequented  by  the. 
German  nobility  and  even  by  the  leading  Magyar  nobles,  who 
maintained  great  state  and  spent  money  freely.  A  good  deal 
was  done  for  the  improvement  of  the  capital  by  Leopold  I  and 
succeeding  rulers,  especially  for  sanitation,  which  needed  reform 
very  badly,  for  between  1770  and  1782  the  death-rate  was  as 
heavy  as  40  in  the  1000.2  It  may  have  been  partly  owing 
to  the  social  amenities  of  Vienna  that  its  inhabitants  concerned 
themselves  but  little  with  politics.  They  might  protest,  as  in 

1  Cf.  Wolf,  pp.  415  ff. 

2  The  population  was  about  250,000,  Paris  at  the  time  having  700,000  people, 
London,  900,000. 


i79o]  LEOPOLD  II  AND  THE  EASTERN  QUESTION  353 


17 89,  against  the  heaviness  of  the  taxation,  but  they  did  not 
trouble  about  Joseph’s  ecclesiastical  reforms  ;  and  even  the  storm 
and  stress  of  the  Napoleonic  wars  did  not  affect  them  to  any¬ 
thing  like  the  same  extent  as  it  did  the  North  Germans.  They 
neither  suffered  as  much  nor  felt  the  degradation  of  Napoleon’s 
domination  as  keenly,  so  that  even  the  enthusiasm  of  the  War 
of  Liberation  left  them  comparatively  untouched. 

Even  the  Treaty  of  Reichenbach  had  not  got  rid  of  the 
Eastern  Question.  It  had  only  made  a  provisional  arrange¬ 
ment  by  which  the  war  was  prevented  from  spreading  further ; 
peace  had  yet  to  be  made,  and  it  was  by  no  means  certain 
that  it  would  be  possible  to  arrange  it  on  terms  satisfactory 
to  all  concerned.  However,  one  result  of  the  treaty  was  that 
no  opposition  was  offered  to  Leopold’s  candidature  for  the 
Empire.  It  was  felt  desirable  in  view  of  the  state  of  affairs  in 
France  that  the  interregnum  should  be  brought  to  an  end  as 
soon  as  possible,  and  on  September  30th,  1790,  Leopold  was 
unanimously  elected.  His  first  important  act  as  Emperor 
was  to  issue  a  protest  (Dec.  14th)  against  the  decrees  of  the 
French  Assembly  of  August  4th,  1789,  abolishing  feudalism 
and  its  appendages,  on  the  ground  that  they  violated  the 
treaty  rights  of  those  members  of  the  Empire  who  held  lands 
in  Alsace.  But  this  protest  was  a  mere  paper  form,  and  was 
only  important  as  an  indication  of  future  trouble ;  for  the  time 
being  Leopold’s  most  pressing  task  was  to  bring  about  peace 
with  Turkey,  and  to  put  his  relations  with  Prussia  and  Russia 
on  a  satisfactory  footing. 

Though  disposed  to  establish  good  relations  with  Prussia, 
Leopold  had  no  intention  of  throwing  Russia  over  altogether  ; 
and  Russia,  if  relieved  by  the  Peace  of  Verela  (Aug.  1790) 
from  the  hostility  of  the  still  respectable  naval  power  of 
Sweden,  was  yet  afraid  of  a  coalition  between  the  Triple 
Alliance,  Poland  and  Turkey,  and  therefore  desired  to  retain 
the  Austrian  alliance,  although  negotiations  for  peace  between 
Austria  and  the  Porte  had  begun  at  Sistova  in  December 
1790.  These  at  first  failed  to  produce  any  satisfactory  result. 
The  Turks  demanded  that  Austria  should  not  merely  give  up 
her  recent  conquests  but  Bukovina  also,  a  proposal  Austria 
absolutely  refused  to  entertain,  so  that  the  negotiations  were 
broken  off  (Feb.  10th).  It  seemed  as  if  Leopold’s  efforts  to 
avert  a  general  European  war  would  be  unsuccessful,  for  Pitt 
23 


354  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1791 


had  committed  himself  to  forcing  Russia  to  relax  her  grip  on 
Oczakow,  and  in  conjunction  with  Prussia  he  was  preparing 
to  present  an  ultimatum  to  Catherine.  Leopold  had  no  wish 
to  embark  in  a  war  against  England  and  Prussia  in  order  that 
Russia  should  keep  Oczakow,  but  the  failure  to  arrange  terms 
with  Turkey  made  his  position  very  awkward.  It  might  have 
been  difficult  for  him  to  avoid  supporting  Russia  against  the 
Triple  Alliance  had  not  relief  come  from  England  (March). 
Public  opinion  proved  absolutely  hostile  to  the  proposed  inter¬ 
vention  on  behalf  of  Turkey,  and  Pitt  found  himself  compelled 
to  abandon  the  idea.  Prussia  showed  no  disposition  to  take 
up  arms  alone  on  behalf  of  Turkey,  Russia’s  position  was 
enormously  improved  and  the  Turks  found  themselves  com¬ 
pelled  to  modify  their  attitude  towards  Austria.  Negotiations 
were  accordingly  resumed  (May),  and  after  several  hitches,  were 
finally  brought  to  an  end  by  the  Peace  of  Sistova  (Aug.  4th, 
1791).  This  renewed  the  Peace  of  Belgrade  and  the  sub¬ 
sequent  Austro-Turkish  commercial  treaties.  Austria  restored 
the  conquests  she  had  made  since  February  1788,  but  a 
separate  treaty  ceded  to  her  Old  Orsova  and  a  small  strip  of 
territory  in  Croatia.1  The  Russo-Turkish  War  was  brought 
to  a  close  about  the  same  time  by  a  preliminary  treaty  at 
Galatz,  which  was  completed  by  the  definite  Peace  of  Jassy  in 
January  1792. 

The  real  importance  of  the  cessation  of  the  Turkish  War 
was  that  it  removed  one  of  the  principal  obstacles  to  those 
better  relations  between  Austria  and  Prussia  for  which,  mainly 
on  account  of  the  state  of  affairs  in  France,  both  Leopold  and 
Frederick  William  were  anxious.  Kaunitz,  of  course,  was  still 
opposed  to  anything  in  the  way  of  an  alliance,  but  the  Vice- 
Chancellor,  Philip  Cobenzl,  received  Bischoffswerder  when  he 
visited  Vienna  early  in  1791  to  convey  Frederick  William’s 
overtures  to  Leopold.  The  truth  was  that  both  in  Austria  and 
in  Prussia  the  monarchs  were  taking  the  direction  of  affairs 
from  the  ministers  who  had  till  then  guided  them  ;  and  while 
despite  the  prejudices  of  Kaunitz,  who  could  never  forget 
Silesia  and  1740,  Leopold  was  coming  to  favour  a  recon¬ 
ciliation  with  Prussia,  Frederick  William,  without  actually 
dismissing  Hertzberg,  was  abandoning  the  traditions  of 
the  system  of  Frederick  II  which  Hertzberg  represented. 

1  Cf.  Wolf,  p.  383. 


1 7 9 1  ]  LEOPOLD  II  AND  THE  EASTERN  QUESTION  355 


In  June  1791,  Bischoffswerder  revisited  Leopold,  then  at 
Milan,  and  acquainted  him  with  Frederick  William’s  desire  for 
a  personal  interview.  Leopold  was  not  long  about  deciding. 
On  June  18th  he  informed  Bischoffswerder  that  he  approved 
of  the  project  of  an  alliance  and  would  be  glad  to  have  an 
interview  with  Frederick  William.  It  was  arranged  that  this 
should  be  held  in  Saxon  territory  at  Pillnitz,  and  in  the  course 
of  the  summer;  and  with  this  Bischoffswerder  departed  (June 
24th).  The  foundation  of  the  First  Coalition  had  been  laid. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


GERMANY  AND  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

AMONG  the  causes  of  Leopold’s  anxiety  for  peace  with 
Turkey,  even  on  terms  hardly  in  keeping  with  the 
military  successes  Austria  had  gained  in  the  war,  was  his  wish 
to  have  his  hands  free  to  deal  with  France.  Few  things  are 
more  remarkable  than  the  way  in  which  the  earlier  stages  of  the 
movement  which  was  to  exercise  so  enormous  an  influence  over 
every  branch  of  German  life  were  overshadowed  by  the  Eastern 
Question.  Far  from  engaging  the  attention  of  Germany  or  of 
Europe  as  a  whole,  the  French  Revolution  was,  until  the  year 
1791,  regarded  as  a  purely  French  concern,  important  to  the 
rest  of  Europe  only  because  it  prevented  France  from  taking 
her  usual  part  in  international  politics.  It  was  looked  upon  as 
likely  to  paralyse  the  power  of  France,  to  weaken  her,  to  engage 
her  in  civil  and  domestic  strife,  and  to  make  her  a  negligible 
quantity  in  the  calculations  of  the  Foreign  Ministries  of  Europe. 
Leopold  had,  of  course,  to  take  into  consideration  the  chances  of 
the  complication  of  the  situation  in  Belgium  by  the  intervention 
of  French  revolutionaries ;  but  when  the  Belgian  insurrection 
had  been  suppressed,  and  the  Bishop  of  Liege,  in  virtue  of  a 
decree  of  the  Imperial  Chamber  of  April  1790,  had  been  restored 
to  his  dominions  and  to  his  ancient  rights,  there  seemed  no 
immediate  likelihood  of  trouble.1 

The  causes  to  which  the  intervention  of  the  Powers  of 
Europe  in  the  affairs  of  France  is  most  commonly  assigned,  the 
support  of  monarchical  principles  against  a  militant  and  sub¬ 
versive  democracy  and  Leopold’s  anxiety  to  succour  his  sister 
and  his  brother-in-law,  were  not  perhaps  the  most  important 

1  An  insurrection  had  broken  out  in  Liege  in  the  autumn  of  1789,  the  Bishop,  a 
Count  von  Hoensbrook,  had  been  forced  to  fly  to  Treves,  upon  which  Prussia 
marched  troops  into  the  Bishopric  to  restore  order.  This  intervention  was  mainly 
designed  to  give  Prussia  a  foothold  in  the  Netherlands,  but  on  the  restoration  of 
better  relations  between  her  and  Austria  she  abandoned  the  Liegois  and  withdrew 
her  troops. 

356 


1 791]  GERMANY  AND  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  357 


factors  in  embroiling  France  with  Europe  in  1791-1792.  These 
motives  did  exist,  and  did  influence  Leopold  and  Frederick 
William  II,  though  neither  of  these  monarchs  was  animated 
merely,  as  was  the  Swedish  knight-errant  King,  Gustavus  III,  by 
a  chivalrous  desire  to  come  to  the  assistance  of  the  imperilled 
Bourbons ;  nor  did  their  notions  of  propriety  and  orderliness 
receive  the  same  shock  that  the  excesses  of  the  Revolutionists  in¬ 
flicted  upon  the  order-loving  mind  of  George  III.  Leopold  can  have 
known  but  little  of  his  sister  ;  and  the  Franco- Austrian  alliance, 
which  he  is  supposed  to  have  wished  to  preserve,  had  been 
practically  non-existent  ever  since  Vergennes  had  first  obtained 
the  direction  of  the  affairs  of  France.  Frederick  William  II 
interfered  rather  more  as  the  champion  of  absolutist  and 
monarchical  principles  ;  but  he  was  a  true  Hohenzollern  and  in  his 
eyes  the  strongest  argument  in  favour  of  intervention  was  the 
prospect  of  obtaining  territorial  acquisitions  at  the  expense  of 
the  weakened  France,  torn  by  internal  dissensions,  with  which 
he  expected  to  have  to  deal.  Quite  apart  from  these  questions, 
however,  there  were  two  points  over  which  a  collision  between 
France  and  the  Empire  was  inevitable,  the  rights  of  those  Princes 
of  the  Empire  who  held  land  in  Alsace,  and  the  support  and 
shelter  given  by  the  Princes  of  Western  Germany  to  the  bands 
of  IAench  emigres  who  were  collecting  along  the  Eastern 
frontier  of  F ranee  and  breathing  vengeance  on  the  enemies  from 
whom  they  had  fled. 

Of  the  many  anomalies  in  the  constitution  of  Germany  in 
the  1 8th  Century,  the  relations  which  existed  between  Alsace 
and  the  Empire  were  about  the  most  remarkable.1  Alsace 
had  been  ceded  in  full  sovereignty  to  France  in  1648,  but  “sav¬ 
ing  the  rights  of  the  Empire.”  What  this  exactly  meant  was 
never  clear — probably  it  was  never  meant  to  be  clear.  In  any 
case  the  important  fact  was  that  many  Princes  of  the  Empire, 
including  among  others  the  Elector  Palatine,  the  Electors 
of  Treves  and  Mayence  and  the  Bishop  of  Worms,  held  lands 
in  Alsace  by  feudal  tenure  and  had  thus  been  affected  by  the 
decrees  of  August  4th,  1789,  abolishing  feudalism  altogether. 
They  had  protested  vigorously  against  this  infringement  of  the 
rights  secured  to  them  by  the  Peace  of  Westphalia,  but  they 
had  not  been  able  to  get  the  National  Assembly  to  see  eye  to 
eye  with  them  in  the  matter.  Just  before  Joseph’s  death  the 

1  Cf.  pp.  57-58. 


358  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1791 


deputies  of  the  Upper  Rhenish  Circle  had  petitioned  him  to 
protect  their  rights  in  Alsace,  and  Leopold’s  election  capitula¬ 
tions  had  pledged  him  to  see  justice  done.  In  December  1790 
the  Emperor  took  the  matter  up,  addressing  to  the  French 
Assembly  a  request  for  the  restoration  of  the  old  conditions,  to 
which  that  body  returned  no  answer.  The  question  was  then 
referred  to  the  Diet ;  but  no  further  steps  were  taken  beyond  the 
publication  of  a  decree  ( Reichsschluss )  upon  the  subject.  Mean¬ 
while  the  emigration  had  begun,  and  French  nobles  were  be¬ 
ginning  to  cross  the  frontier  and  to  collect  in  the  cities  along 
the  Rhine,  where  they  were  for  the  most  part  welcomed  by  the 
local  authorities,  who  looked  with  great  disfavour  on  the  Revo¬ 
lutionary  principles  now  beginning  to  make  themselves  felt 
beyond  the  French  frontiers. 

As  a  whole,  Germany  was  so  very  different  from  France, 
socially,  politically  and  intellectually,  that  the  ideas  of  the 
Revolution  gained  but  little  ground  even  in  the  more  advanced 
parts  of  the  country,  and  the  influence  which  the  Revolution 
exercised  was  one  of  reaction  rather  than  of  attraction.  Split 
up  into  petty  principalities,  Germany  lacked  the  homogeneity 
and  uniformity  which  made  France  strong,  compact,  and  con¬ 
crete  in  thought,  which  enabled  the  Revolution  to  identify 
itself  with  the  country,  to  overthrow  the  Bourbons  by  accusing 
them  of  being  dynastic  rather  than  national,  and  to  make 
incivisme  the  worst  of  crimes.  It  was  not  merely  political  unity 
that  Germany  lacked.  Socially  -and  economically  there  were 
far  greater  differences  between  districts  only  a  very  small 
distance  apart  than  there  were  between  provinces  at  one  end 
of  France  and  those  at  the  other.  This  was  partly  due  to  the 
want  of  homogeneity  in  administration  ;  but  other  causes  affected 
it  also.  Differences  in  religion  were  reflected  by  marked 
differences  in  condition  between  Catholic  and  Protestant 
states.  On  the  whole,  the  former  were  backward,  poor 
and  ignorant ;  the  latter,  more  wealthy,  enlightened  and 
prosperous.1  Even  in  the  intellectual  sphere  the  same 
effects  were  to  be  traced.  It  was  want  of  unity  in  Germany 
which  tended  to  make  thought  abstract,  to  build  up 
separate  literary  schools  which  gloried  in  their  independence 
and  isolation.  Where  the  unity  of  France  made  it  possible  to 
establish  a  so-called  “equality,”  the  localism  and  particularism 

1  Cf.  Mirabeau,  Royaume  de  Pnisse. 


1 791]  GERMANY  AND  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  359 


of  Germany  kept  classes  apart  and  prevented  fusion  not  merely 
between  the  higher  and  the  lower,  but  also  between  correspond¬ 
ing  strata  in  different  states.  If  the  French  Revolution  gave 
birth  to  German  nationalism,  it  did  it  by  first  strengthening 
local  patriotism.  The  subjects  of  an  Imperial  Knight  had  to 
become  Wtirtembergers  or  Bavarians  before  they  could  become 
Germans.  The  substitution  of  states  of  moderate  size  for  the 
multitude  of  petty  principalities  whose  existence  was  so  strong 
a  barrier  to  unity  of  interests  or  of  ideas,  seemed  a  stopping 
short  on  the  road  to  the  unification  of  Germany,  but  it  was  an 
essential  preliminary  to  the  attainment  of  any  approach  to  that 
end.  The  process  was  one  of  degrees.  Good  government  and 
the  abolition  of  the  abuses  of  the  cincien  regime  were  more 
desired  by  the  peoples  of  Germany  than  self-government  was. 
For  that  they  were  not  prepared — they  were  in  too  backward 
a  stage  of  political  development.  They  looked  to  their  rulers 
to  play  the  part  of  the  enlightened  despot  and  to  effect  for 
them  the  reforms  they  needed.  Thus,  where  the  dynasty  rose 
to  the  occasion  and  identified  itself,  as  in  Prussia,  with  the  adap¬ 
tation  of  the  French  Revolution  to  local  needs  and  aspirations, 
it  gained  enormously  in  prestige  and  influence  from  a  movement 
which  had  overthrown  the  ancient  monarchy  of  France. 

It  was  a  curious  circumstance  that  the  first  impulse  given 
by  the  clearing  away  of  the  old  system  through  French  influence 
was  in  the  direction  of  getting  rid  of  French  influences,  especially 
over  language  and  thought.  The  first  of  the  “  rights  of  man  ” 
was  the  right  to  be  a  German,  and  this  made  itself  apparent  in 
poetry,  in  philosophy  and  in  art.  The  French  tastes,  education 
and  ideas  which  had  ruled  the  courts  of  Germany  were  gradu¬ 
ally  ousted.  No  German  Prince  had  been  more  under  French 
influence  than  Frederick  II.  The  Louis  XIV  of  Prussia,  French 
in  language  and  utterly  without  national  feeling,  though  alive 
to  the  advantage  of  posing  as  the  defender  of  Germany  and  the 
champion  of  German  interests,  it  was  a  little  curious  that  he 
should  have  done  something  to  revive  German  feelings  by  his 
victory  at  Rossbach  over  an  army  mainly  composed  of  Germans, 
and  representing  the  only  bond  between  the  various  parts  of 
Germany,  the  Empire.  The  truth  was  that  great  as  was  the 
power  and  influence  of  France  over  Germany,  so  far  as  the 
elements  of  a  national  feeling  existed  hostility  and  opposition 
to  France  were  its  principal  ingredients.  The  formidable 


36o  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1792 


Western  neighbour  was  a  constant  menace  to  Germany.  If 
the  generations  had  long  since  passed  away  which  had  seen 
the  Palatinate  devastated,  Heidelberg  laid  in  ruins,  Mannheim 
given  to  the  flames,  there  must  have  been  many  Hessians 
and  Westphalians  who  retained  vivid  recollections  in  1792  of 
the  performances  of  the  soldiery  of  “  Pere  la  Maraude  ” 1  and 
his  successors  in  the  Seven  Years’  War.  The  loss  of  Lorraine 
was  only  half  a  century  old,  and  the  centenary  of  the  seizure  of 
Strassburg  must  have  recalled  the  bitter  memory  of  Germany’s 
helplessness  in  the  face  of  the  Chambres  de  Reunion  to  every 
patriotic  German,  if  indeed  any  German  living  in  1792  had  a 
claim  to  that  description.  The  German  Princes  might  outrage 
their  patriotic  sentiments  by  assisting  in  the  aggrandisement  of 
France  at  the  expense  of  Germany,  but  their  insulted  national 
pride  could  only  be  healed  by  a  corresponding  increase  in  the 
compensation  they  must  receive.  Frederick  II  might  stoop  to 
accept  the  help  of  France  in  robbing  another  German  Power  of 
one  of  its  provinces,  Charles  of  Bavaria  might  condescend  to 
owe  his  precarious  tenure  of  the  Imperial  throne  to  the  heir  of 
Louis  XIV,  but  one  and  all  professed  to  look  upon  France  as  a 
foreigner  even  when  receiving  benefits  at  her  hands,  one  and  all 
were  ready,  if  it  suited  the  momentary  exigencies  of  their 
policy,  to  invoke  the  name  of  Germany,  to  allege  German 
national  interests  and  to  pose  as  the  watchful  defenders  of 
Germany  against  France. 

But  although  the  condition  of  Germany  in  1792  was  such 
that  there  was  but  little  likelihood  of  resistance  to  French 
aggression,  Germany  was  not  as  accessible  to  the  influence  of 
the  new  French  propaganda  as  were  Belgium  and  Holland  and 
Italy.  It  would  not,  of  course,  be  true  to  represent  Germany  as 
quite  untouched  by  sympathy  with  the  Revolution.  The  high 
ideals  of  some  of  the  men  of  1789  were  fully  in  keeping  with 
the  doctrines  of  the  Illuminati ;  the  notion  of  Liberty,  Fraternity 
and  Equality,  the  appeal  to  the  “  rights  of  man,”  the  tendency 
to  regard  all  humanity  as  one,  all  these  were  eagerly  welcomed 
by  the  cosmopolitan  “  intellectuals”  to  whom  patriotism  was  at 
best  only  a  heroic  weakness.  Schiller  and  Goethe  raised  no 
protest  against  the  advance  of  the  French  frontier  to  the  banks 
of  the  Rhine ;  Kant  and  Fichte  welcomed  the  overthrow  of 
privilege,  of  class  distinctions,  of  feudal  restrictions  as  steps 

1  The  Due  de  Richelieu. 


1792]  GERMANY  AND  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  361 


towards  the  millennium  of  liberty  and  the  rule  of  the  intellect, 
they  did  not  stop  to  reflect  that  reforms  effected  by  a  foreign 
conqueror  have  but  an  uncertain  guarantee.  Yet  the  men  who 
welcomed  the  Revolution  were  politically  of  little  weight. 
Trees  of  liberty  were  planted  at  Hamburg,  in  several  places 
the  taking  of  the  Bastille  was  celebrated ;  but  this  was 
of  scarcely  any  political  significance.  The  governments  of 
Germany  saw  in  the  new  movement  a  danger  to  be  closely 
watched  and  suppressed ;  and  even  if  men  like  Thugut  had  not 
been  on  the  alert  to  prevent  the  Republican  propaganda  from 
taking  hold,  the  country  offered  an  unfruitful  soil  to  the  seed. 
The  inhabitants  of  Southern  and  Western  Germany  had  but 
little  in  common  with  the  French,  they  received  laws  and  con¬ 
stitutions  from  France  without  being  in  any  way  assimilated. 

The  reasons  for  this  are  not  hard  to  discover.  In  Germany 
there  was  nothing  to  correspond  to  the  French  bourgeoisie ,  no 
class  capable  of  throwing  off  the  yoke  of  the  nobles.  Feudalism 
had  still  so  strong  a  hold  upon  German  society  that  the  idea  of 
achieving  political  independence  hardly  seems  to  have  entered 
into  the  minds  of  the  peasantry:  they  were  still  too  much  under 
the  authority  of  their  lords,  and  the  lords,  on  their  part,  were 
identified  with  their  estates  and  with  the  local  administration  in 
a  way  which  France  with  her  idle  and  absentee  noblesse  could  not 
parallel.  Thus,  except  where  the  mediaeval  state  of  things  had 
begun  to  pass  away,  the  Revolution  in  Germany  was  not  a  root 
and  branch  affair,  for  in  most  places  the  mediaeval  system 
retained  sufficient  vitality  to  stand  being  reformed.  In  a  few 
places  only  was  it  already  so  far  advanced  towards  decadence 
that  it  could  be  swept  completely  away.  Among  these  the 
territories  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Upper  Rhine  had  advanced 
about  the  furthest.  Here  the  inhabitants  were  for  the  most 
part  vine-growers,  more  alert,  more  excitable  and  more  vigorous 
than  the  sluggish  and  submissive  agricultural  population  lower 
down  the  river.  Round  Mayence  there  really  existed  the  nucleus 
of  a  German  Republican  party,  a  Tiers- Etat  in  embryo.  The 
peasantry  in  this  part  were  proprietors,  and  having  much  more 
civil  liberty  than  was  the  case  elsewhere  in  Germany,  were 
sufficiently  advanced  to  desire  still  more. 

It  was  a  district  without  political  traditions,  very  much  split 
up,  largely  in  the  hands  of  ecclesiastical  rulers  who,  expecting 
that  before  long  the  threatened  secularisation  of  the  ecclesiastical 


362  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1792 


territories  would  deprive  them  of  the  duty  of  governing,  were 
therefore  preparing  themselves  for  the  loss  of  their  administrative 
functions  by  neglecting  them.  Nor  were  the  lay  rulers  much 
more  formidable  barriers  to  French  influence.  The  Palatinate 
branch  of  the  Wittelsbach  family  governed  indifferently,  the 
Zweibriicken  branch  distinctly  ill.  The  Imperial  Cities  had  no 
real  municipal  life  or  patriotism  :  the  oligarchies  which  ruled  them 
were  weak  and  discredited.  Any  movement  towards  democracy 
among  the  lower  classes  was  bound  to  tell  in  favour  of  France, 
and  there  was  nothing  whatever  to  check  French  aggression 
or  even  annexation.  Forster  and  the  rest  of  the  Republican 
party  at  Mayence  would  probably  have  preferred  a  Cisrhenane 
Republic  under  French  protection  to  direct  incorporation,  but 
civil  and  social  liberty,  good  government  and  the  abolition  of 
feudal  abuses  were  quite  enough  to  reconcile  the  districts  West 
of  the  Rhine  to  annexation.  To  a  modified  degree  this  was 
true  of  most  of  South  and  Western  Germany.  The  application 
of  the  Napoleonic  system  brought  great  material  benefits, 
received  through  the  local  dynasties  which  had  accepted  French 
protection.  It  was  only  when  this  came  to  involve  the  rigid 
enforcement  of  the  Continental  System  and  a  heavy  drain  of 
conscripts  to  fight  in  a  quarrel  which  did  not  concern  the  states 
from  which  they  were  drawn,  that  French  protection  was  found 
to  be  a  yoke  too  heavy  to  be  borne  and  that  Napoleon’s 
arbitrary  rearrangement  of  the  map  of  Germany  excited 
opposition.  Nothing  so  clearly  illustrates  the  weakness  of  the 
resistance  of  Germany  to  the  French  in  the  war  against  the 
First  Coalition  as  the  very  gradual  way  in  which  South  and 
Western  Germany  deserted  the  failing  fortunes  of  the  Emperor 
in  1813.  The  difference  between  the  attitude  of  Prussia,  which 
had  received  no  material  benefits,  but  only  insults  and  injuries 
from  Napoleon,  and  that  of  Baden  or  Wtirtemberg,  which 
would  not  join  the  Allies  until  Austria  and  Prussia  had  promised 
to  respect  the  reorganisation  effected  under  French  influence,  is 
typical  of  the  state  of  Germany  between  1792  and  1814.  The 
“national”  movement  of  1813-1814  was  made  possible  by 
France  and  by  France  alone.  It  was  not  merely  that  she 
neutralised  the  material  benefits  of  her  rule  by  the  even  greater 
material  injuries  of  the  conscription  and  the  Continental 
System,  it  was  not  merely  that  Napoleon’s  actions  betrayed  his 
selfishness  and  his  lack  of  consideration  for  German  interests, 


1792]  GERMANY  AND  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  363 


and  that  his  arbitrary  and  oppressive  rule  brought  home  to  the 
client-states  the  fact  that  their  “  protector  ”  was  in  truth  a  tyrant 
and  an  oppressor.  By  suppressing  the  material  obstacles  which 
had  till  then  prevented  the  union  of  the  German  peoples,  by 
concentrating  the  petty  states  and  uniting  them  in  medium¬ 
sized  states,  France  opened  avenues  to  that  national  life  which 
her  propaganda,  no  less  than  the  example  of  the  national 
resistance  of  England,  Spain  and  Russia,  had  fomented.  The 
overthrow  of  the  relics  of  the  Empire  left  the  ground  clear  for 
the  construction  of  something  not  intimately  associated  as  the 
Empire  was  with  disunion,  localism  and  Kleinstaaterei. 

But  as  things  stood  in  1792  the  action  of  Germany  was 
bound  to  be  determined  rather  by  the  relations  of  the  various 
members  of  the  Empire  to  one  another,  than  by  any  national 
feeling.  Disunited,  without  an  army,  almost  without  a  con¬ 
stitution,  for  the  Diet,  which  was  the  sole  bond  of  union  between 
the  states  of  Germany,  had  fallen  into  such  disrepute  that  only 
14  Princes  out  of  100  eligible  to  send  representatives  and  only 
8  cities  out  of  51  troubled  to  be  represented  at  Ratisbon  in 
1788,  Germany  cannot  be  said  to  have  adopted  any  attitude 
towards  the  French  Revolution,  because  no  “  Germany  ”  capable 
of  adopting  an  attitude  really  existed.  In  place  of  Germany 
stood  Austria  and  Prussia,  whose  opposition  was  to  soon  reassert 
itself  despite  the  temporary  reconciliation  between  their  rulers, 
and  the  whole  host  of  minor  states,  lay  and  ecclesiastical,  each 
following  its  own  local  and  dynastic  policy  without  any  glimpse 
of  a  wider  patriotism.  Yet  disunited,  distracted  and  divided 
as  Germany  was,  there  still  existed  a  German  idea,  a  confused 
notion  of  Germany  as  a  whole,  a  sense  of  unity  and  nationality 
which  the  neighbours  and  enemies  of  Germany  had  always 
sought  to  suppress,  and  which  not  even  the  Germans  themselves 
had  done  anything  to  arouse.  The  intellectual  revival  which 
was  making  itself  felt  throughout  Germany  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  1 8th  century  had  not  taken  a  national  line,  even  where 
it  had  touched  political  or  social  grievances.  It  had  done  much 
to  arouse  intellectual  activity,  to  make  people  think,  to  pave 
the  way  for  the  reception  of  new  ideas,  but  the  idea  of  German 
nationality  was  not  one  to  which  the  leaders  of  German  thought 
had  as  yet  paid  any  attention.  If  the  German  idea  existed  it 
was  in  a  state  of  suspended  animation. 

Of  the  domestic  situation  of  Austria  and  of  Prussia  enough 


364  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1792 


has  already  been  said  ;  but  seeing  that  the  war  which  was 
about  to  break  out  affords  the  classical  example  of  the  utter 
disintegration  of  Germany,  it  may  be  well  to  make  a  brief 
survey  of  the  principal  minor  states  and  their  rulers,  and  trace  the 
chief  changes  which  had  taken  place  among  them  since  1715. 
To  follow  their  history  in  detail  is  impossible :  in  those  where 
there  is  any  history  to  be  followed  it  is  but  little  connected  with 
the  general  course  of  affairs  outside  of  which  it  lies.  Too  small 
for  the  most  part  to  develope  very  marked  differences  either 
socially,  economically,  or  intellectually,  the  minor  states  of 
Germany  tend  to  lack  individuality,  and  it  is  only  by  means 
of  their  rulers  that  one  can  distinguish  between  them.  When 
it  has  been  said  that  the  1 8th.  Century  was  the  age  of  the 
“  benevolent  despots,”  and  that  in  some  of  the  minor  Princes 
of  Germany  the  benevolent  predominated  and  in  others  the 
despotic,  one  has  said  almost  all  that  is  to  be  said. 

Next  to  the  Hapsburgs  and  the  Hohenzollerns,  the  family 
which  in  1792  held  most  land  in  Germany  was  that  of  the 
Wittelsbachs.  The  extinction  of  the  Neuburgs  in  1742  had 
brought  the  Lower  Palatinate1  into  the  possession  of  the 
Sulzbach  branch,  who  already  held  the  principality  of  that 
name  in  the  Upper  Palatinate  together  with  the  part  of  the 
Cleves-Jiilich  inheritance  assigned  to  them  in  1666.2  On 
the  extinction  in  1777  of  the  Bavarian  line  the  Elector  Palatine 
had  succeeded  to  the  14,000  square  miles  and  the  1,100,000 
subjects  of  his  cousins  at  Munich,  while  his  heir,  the  Duke  of 
Zweibrticken,  ruled  some  70,000  people  inhabiting  a  district  of 
under  900  square  miles.  On  the  accession  of  Maximilian 
Joseph  of  Zweibrlicken  to  Bavaria  and  the  Palatinate  in  1799, 
the  representative  of  all  these  Wittelsbach  lines  was  the  ruler 
of  the  third  largest  accumulation  of  territories  in  Germany,  in 
all  21,000  square  miles  with  about  2\  million  inhabitants,  which 
had  an  additional  importance  from  their  strategical  position  on 
the  Upper  Danube,  which  gave  Bavaria  the  power  of  being  either 
Austria’s  stoutest  bulwark  or  the  most  useful  ally  of  her 
enemies.  Charles  Theodore,  the  reigning  Elector  in  1792,  was 
on  the  whole  a  good  administrator,  though  by  no  means 
popular.  He  was  a  somewhat  bigoted  Roman  Catholic,  and 
his  readiness  to  acquiesce  in  Joseph  Ii’s  designs  on  Bavaria  did 

1  5300  square  miles,  with  about  a  million  inhabitants. 

2  Some  6O0  square  miles  and  50,000  people. 


1792]  GERMANY  AND  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  365 


not  much  recommend  him  to  his  Bavarian  subjects.  In  the 
Palatinate  he  was  far  better  liked.  There  he  felt  at  home : 
there  he  did  a  good  deal  for  education  and  for  the  encouragement 
of  art  and  literature.  Heidelberg  and  Mannheim  were  both 
embellished  and  improved  under  his  direction,  Mannheim  be¬ 
coming  the  best  and  most  famous  theatrical  centre  in  Germany. 

In  inhabitants  the  territories  of  the  Wettin  dynasty  in 
Saxony  exceeded  the  Wittelsbach  lands  ;  but  in  the  valleys  of 
the  Saale  and  the  Middle  Elbe  population  was  far  denser  than 
on  the  Upper  Danube  and  along  the  foothills  of  the  Alps, 
despite  even  the  ravages  in  which  the  Silesian  struggle  had 
involved  the  unhappy  Saxons.  Frederick  Augustus  III  had 
been  a  minor  under  the  regency  of  his  uncle  Xavier  for  the 
first  five  years  of  his  rule  (1763-1768),  and  it  was  just  as  well 
for  Saxony  that  he  therefore  did  not  come  forward  as  a  candidate 
for  that  Polish  crown  which  had  brought  so  little  advantage 
either  to  Saxony  or  to  its  rulers.  Under  his  wise  and  en¬ 
lightened  rule  Saxony  had  enjoyed  peace  which  had  permitted 
the  return  of  some  degree  of  prosperity,  education,  agriculture 
and  forestry  all  coming  in  for  much  encouragement  and 
protection. 

Of  the  other  territories  of  the  Wettin  family  the  Electoral 
line  had  recovered  Merseburg,  Weissenfels  and  Zeitz  on  the 
extinction  of  the  three  cadet  branches  established  by  the 
partition  of  1656,  but  there  still  existed  in  1792  several  small 
principalities  belonging  to  the  Ernestine  line  of  which  Saxe- 
Weimar  alone  merits  special  notice. 

Under  the  beneficent  and  wise  rule  of  Duke  Charles 
Augustus  (succeeded  1758,  a  minor  till  1775)  it  was  the  intel¬ 
lectual  centre  of  Germany.  Goethe  had  settled  at  Weimar  in 
response  to  a  special  invitation  from  the  Duke,  and  the 
University  of  Jena  was  one  of  the  most  flourishing  and 
vigorous  in  the  whole  country.  Schiller  was  one  of  its  most 
popular  teachers,  Wieland  and  Herder  completed  the  quartette 
whose  presence  made  Weimar  famous.  But  Charles  Augustus 
was  not  so  much  addicted  to  the  intellectual  as  to  be  unmind¬ 
ful  of  the  material  side  of  life.  The  finances  of  the  little  state 
were  in  good  order ;  agriculture,  mining  and  industries  flour¬ 
ished  ;  public  works  of  importance  and  benefit  were  undertaken. 
Politically  the  Duke  was  an  adherent  of  Prussia :  he  had  been 
active  in  negotiating  the  formation  of  the  League  of  Princes  in 


366  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1792 


1785,  and  he  was  to  take  part  in  the  campaigns  of  1792  and 
1806  as  a  Prussian  General. 

After  the  close  of  the  Seven  Years’  War  one  hears  but  little 
the  British  partner  in  the  “Personal  Union”  had  had  some 
of  the  Electorate  of  Hanover.1  If  under  George  I  and  George  1 1 
cause  to  complain  that  its  interests  were  sacrificed  to  those  of 
Hanover,  under  George  III,  who  prided  himself  on  his  freedom 
from  the  Hanoverian  prejudices  of  his  predecessors,  the  tables 
were  completely  turned.  Hanoverian  battalions  had  shared  in 
Elliott’s  successful  defence  of  Gibraltar  (1779-1783),  and  in 
Murray’s  scarcely  less  honourable  capitulation  at  Minorca  G782). 
At  this  very  moment  (1792)  the  14th  and  15th  Hanoverian 
regiments  formed  part  of  the  British  forces  in  India,2  a  quarter 
in  which  by  no  stretch  of  the  imagination  could  Hanover  be 
said  to  be  much  concerned.  But  if  no  longer  given  the  first 
place  in  the  affections  of  its  ruler,  Hanover  was  not  badly 
governed,  though  the  administration  was  altogether  in  the 
hands  of  an  unprogressive  aristocracy,  which  not  only 
filled  the  Privy  Council,  the  body  by  which  the  government 
was  administered,  but  also  controlled  the  local  Estates.  These 
were  of  more  importance  than  they  would  otherwise  have  been 
owing  to  the  absence  of  any  general  assembly  for  the  whole 
Electorate.  Thus  every  new  tax  had  to  be  agreed  to  by  all 
these  Estates,  which  caused  constant  delays  and  hindrances. 
This  absence  of  centralisation  was  not  overcome  by  any  special 
energy  or  activity  on  the  part  of  the  Privy  Council,  whose 
authority  was  restricted  by  the  existence  of  a  separate 
department  for  the  domains,  mines  and  forests,  and  of  an 
equally  independent  War-Chancery.  Still  the  government  if 
unenterprising  was  mild  and  unoppressive  ;  and  if  in  some  parts 
the  peasantry  were  still  serfs,  they  were  on  the  whole  fairly 
prosperous.  Politically,  Hanover  tended  to  act  with  Brunswick- 
Wolfenbiittel  and  with  Prussia,  though  the  old  hostility  to  the 
Hohenzollern  was  by  no  means  extinct.  It  still  lingered 
among  some  of  the  leading  men  ;  but  at  the  time  of  Joseph’s 
attempt  to  exchange  the  Netherlands  for  Bavaria,  Hanover 
adhered  to  the  League  cf  Princes. 

1  Hanover  had  during  the  1 8th  century  acquired  the  County  of  Bentheim,  pawned 
to  it  in  1753,  and  the  little  districts  of  Blumenthal  (1741)  and  Seyn  Altenkirchen 
(1782). 

2  Cf.  Cornwallis  Correspondence. 


1792]  GERMANY  AND  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  367 


The  Duchy  of  Bruns  wick- Wolfenblittel,  though  little  more 
than  a  sixth  of  the  size  of  the  Electorate,  its  area  being  not 
much  over  1500  square  miles,  was  in  proportion  more  populous 
and  wealthy  ;  but  along  with  the  rest  of  North-Western  Germany 
it  had  suffered  a  good  deal  during  the  Seven  Years’  War.  On 
the  extinction  of  the  “new”  Dannenberg  line  with  Duke  Louis 
Rudolf  in  1735,  the  Duchy  had  passed  to  Ferdinand  Albert 
of  Brunswick-Bevern,  the  head  of  a  cadet  branch  established 
in  1666.  He  died  in  the  same  year,  and  was  succeeded  by  his 
eldest  son  Charles,  who  ruled  the  Duchy  for  forty-five  years  and 
did  it  great  service.  The  great  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick,  who 
died  in  1792,  was  the  second  son  of  Duke  Ferdinand  Albert, 
while  other  members  of  the  family  were  also  closely  identified 
with  the  Prussian  service.  Duke  Charles  was  another  of  those 
Princes  who  did  a  good  deal  for  education  and  for  literature. 
The  celebrated  Lessing  was  given  the  post  of  Ducal 
Librarian  in  1770,  the  Collegium  Carolinum  was  founded  at 
Brunswick,  a  Museum  was  established,  and  the  schools  were 
thoroughly  reformed.  But  the  Duke  was  an  extravagant 
ruler,  and  contracted  debts  which  the  limited  revenues 
of  his  territories 1  did  not  suffice  to  discharge.  Thus  he 
was  very  glad  of  the  opportunity  which  England’s  American 
troubles  afforded  to  him  as  to  the  other  needy  owners 
of  Germany’s  principal  article  of  export,  mercenaries,  for 
filling  his  coffers  and  finding  occupation  for  his  men. 
In  January  1776  he  concluded  a  subsidy  treaty  by  which 
in  return  for  110,000  thalers  a  year  and  a  lump  sum 
of  50  thalers  a  head,  4300  Brunswickers  were  taken  into 
British  pay.2 

Duke  Charles  was  succeeded  by  his  eldest  son  Charles 
William  Ferdinand,  “  the  Flereditary  Prince  ”  of  Crefeld  and 
Minden,  the  “  Brunswick  ”  of  Valmy  and  Auerstadt,  who 
proved  no  less  benevolent  and  careful  as  a  ruler  than  gallant 
as  a  soldier.  Under  him  the  Duchy  made  considerable  ad¬ 
vances  :  the  burden  of  taxation  was  reduced,  the  poor-laws 
were  improved,  and  the  country  well-governed.  P'ollowing  his 
father’s  policy,  he  adhered  firmly  to  the  Prussian  alliance,  and 

1  They  amounted  to  about  1,500,000  thalers  per  annum  :  Oncken,  Zeitalter 
Friedrich  der  Grosse ,  ii.  709. 

2  This  force  was  sent  to  Canada,  and  shared  in  Burgoyne’s  gallant  but  ill-fated 
expedition. 


368  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1792 


commanded  the  Prussian  force  which  made  the  unopposed 
promenade  to  Amsterdam  in  1787. 

But  as  a  provider  of  mercenaries,  Brunswick  was  quite 
eclipsed  by  Hesse-Cassel.  Of  the  29,000  Germans  whose 
services  England  hired  in  1776-1777,  Hesse-Cassel  provided 
nearly  17,000.  From  the  days  of  Landgrave  Charles  I 
(1676-1730),  Hesse-Cassel  had  been  pre-eminently  a  military 
State.  His  sons  Frederick  I  (173 o—  1 7 5 1 ) 1  and  William  VII 
(1751-1760)  had  followed  in  his  steps,  the  latter  supplying 
a  large  contingent  to  the  army  in  English  pay  with  which 
Ferdinand  of  Brunswick  disputed  Western  Germany  with  the 
French.  Of  this  war  Hesse-Cassel  was  so  unfortunate  as  to  be 
one  of  the  principal  theatres:  it  endured  great  hardships  and 
was  much  thrown  back,  so  that  the  chief  task  of  Landgrave 
Frederick  II  (1760-1785),  an  energetic  and  careful  ruler,  was  to 
foster  in  every  possible  way  the  restoration  of  his  dominions  to 
a  prosperous  condition.  He  introduced  the  cultivation  of  the 
potato,  reformed  the  land-laws  and  the  system  of  weights  and 
measures.  He  established  a  cantoning  system  after  the 
Prussian  model,  and  maintained  his  forces  at  a  high  level  of 
efficiency.  At  the  same  time,  he  was  not  behind  the  other 
Princes  of  the  day  in  encouraging  the  arts  and  education.  His 
son  William  IX,  the  builder  of  the  famous  castle  of  Wilhelmshohe, 
followed  the  same  policy.  While  Hesse-Cassel  had  continued 
throughout  the  18th  Century  to  adhere  to  the  Prussian  alliance, 
which  was  one  of  the  family  traditions,  Hesse-Darmstadt 
had  been  no  less  loyal  to  her  traditional  policy  of  fidelity 
to  the  Emperor.  Its  rulers  during  the  period,  Ernest  Louis 
(1678-1739),  Louis  VIII  (1739-1768),  Louis  IX  (1768-1790), 
and  Louis  X  (1790-1830),  were  always  on  the  side  of 
Austria,  and  in  the  Seven  Years’  War  Hesse-Darmstadt  was 
distinguished  by  its  antagonism  to  Prussia,  the  patron  and 
ally  of  Hesse-Cassel.2  Louis  ix  is  best  known  in  connection 
with  his  military  establishment  at  Pirmasens,  held  by  a  special 
regiment  of  grenadiers  to  whose  training  he  had  devoted  much 
time.  In  contrast  to  the  other  Princes  of  the  day,  he  steadily 
refused  to  hire  out  his  men  to  foreign  Powers,  and  it  was  not  his 

1  King  of  Sweden  (from  1 720-1 751)  in  virtue  of  his  marriage  with  Ulrica 
Eleanore,  sister  of  Charles  xii. 

2  It  may  perhaps  be  worth  mentioning  that  in  18 66  it  was  Hesse-Cassel  which 
was  annexed  to  Prussia ;  Hesse-Darmstadt  has  retained  its  separate  existence. 


i79o]  GERMANY  AND  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  369 


subjects  who  acquired  for  the  name  of  “  Hessian  ”  so  unfavourable 
a  reputation  in  the  American  War.1 

In  extent  the  possessions  of  the  House  of  Mecklenburg 
were  more  considerable  than  those  of  families  of  greater 
importance  in  German  history ;  but  one  does  not  hear  much  of 
either  Mecklenburg-Strelitz  or  Mecklenburg-Schwerin  except 
for  the  quarrel  between  Duke  Charles  Leopold  and  his  Estates, 
which  had  so  nearly  involved  England  and  Hanover  in  a  war 
with  Russia.2  Both  duchies  had  been  so  fortunate  as  to  lie 
outside  the  theatre  affected  by  the  Seven  Years’  War,  in  which 
they  had  remained  somewhat  apathetically  neutral,  failing  to 
profit  economically  by  the  sufferings  of  their  neighbours.  The 
most  noticeable  feature  with  regard  to  Mecklenburg  was  the 
definite  constitutional  acknowledgment  in  1755  of  the  free 
condition  of  the  peasants,  whose  condition  had  been  steadily 
growing  worse  since  the  Thirty  Years’  War.  They  were  not 
merely  bound  to  the  soil,  but  were  actually  serfs.  The  whole 
district  was  one  of  the  poorest  and  most  backward  in  all 
Germany,  and  neither  Frederick  Francis  I  of  Schwerin  (1785- 
1837)  nor  Charles  of  Strelitz  (1794-1816)  played  at  all  a 
prominent  part  in  the  Revolutionary  epoch. 

Not  long  after  the  end  of  the  Seven  Years’  War  an  important 
change  had  taken  place  in  one  of  the  states  of  North-Western 
Germany.  The  Duchy  of  Oldenburg  had,  as  has  been  already 
stated,  been  under  Danish  rule  since  1666,  but  the  Holstein- 
Gottorp  family  had  never  admitted  Denmark’s  right  to  hold  it, 
and  in  1773  Paul  of  Russia,3  now  the  representative  of  the  main 
line  of  the  Holstein-Gottorp  family,  managed  to  arrange  a  com¬ 
promise.  He  renounced  his  claims  on  Holstein  in  favour  of 
Denmark,  which  thereupon  ceded  Oldenburg  to  the  Czar’s  cousin, 
Duke  Frederick  Augustus  of  Holstein-Eutin,  Prince-Bishop  of 
Liibeck,  a  grandson  of  Christian  Albert  of  Gottorp,  the  great- 
great-grandfather  of  Paul.4  This  change  was  much  appreciated 
by  the  Oldenburgers,  who  found  in  Frederick  Augustus  a  mild 
and  beneficent  ruler,  while  on  his  death  (1785)  his  nephew 
Peter  Frederick  Louis,  who  acted  as  Regent  for  the  imbecile 
heir,  Peter  Frederick  William,  governed  on  very  similar  lines. 

1  Cf.  Trevelyan,  American  Revolution ,  Part  II.  2  Cf.  pp.  69-70,  84,  94. 

3  Peter  in  of  Russia  was  a  Holsteiner  on  his  father’s  side,  Charles  Frederick  of 

Holstein  having  married  Anna,  daughter  of  Peter  the  Great. 

4  Cf.  p.  56. 

24 


3;o  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1790 

Baden,  divided  since  1536  between  the  Baden-Baden  and 
the  Baden-Durlach  lines,  had  been  reunited  twenty  years  before 
the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  on  the  extinction,  in  1771,  of  the 
Baden-Baden  line.  Augustus  George,  who  had  succeeded  to 
his  brother  Louis  George  in  1761,  was,  like  his  brother,  childless, 
and  in  January  1765  he  concluded  with  his  cousin  of  Baden- 
Durlach  the  compact  which  came  into  operation  in  1771. 
Charles  Frederick  of  Baden-Durlach,  who  thus  reunited  the  old 
territories  of  the  House  of  Zahringen,  had  succeeded  his  grand¬ 
father  Charles  William  (1709-1738),  chiefly  noticeable  as  a  warm 
supporter  of  Austria  in  the  Spanish  Succession  War,  when  only 
ten  years  of  age,  and  in  the  eighty-three  years  (1738-1821)  in 
which  he  ruled  he  saw  great  changes  in  the  fortunes  of  Baden. 
As  the  ruler  of  territories  coterminous  with  France,  he  was 
naturally  much  concerned  by  the  events  taking  place  over  the 
border,  and  was  most  anxious  to  prevent  Baden  having  again, 
as  in  1688-1697  and  1702-1714,  to  bear  the  brunt  of  the  war 
and  to  be  once  more  reduced  to  a  condition  of  devastation 
and  ruin.  He  saw  a  prospect  that  all  the  good  work  he  had 
done  would  be  undone  in  one  campaign,  and  his  conduct  in 
the  coming  wars  was  directed  largely  by  this  fear. 

Of  all  the  minor  states  of  Germany  there  are  few  which 
have  so  individual  a  character  as  Wlirtemberg.  Even  into 
the  1 8th  Century  it  retained  enough  of  a  constitution1  to 
distinguish  it  from  the  other  states.  But,  as  has  been  ex¬ 
plained,2  the  necessities  of  a  more  effective  defence  against 
the  French  than  the  enjoyment  of  constitutional  liberties  had 
altered  the  position  of  affairs,  and  forced  the  Wiirtembergers 
to  allow  the  Duke  to  strengthen  his  position  greatly  by  raising 
a  standing  army.  Thus  Eberhard  Louis  was  far  more  autocratic 
than  any  Duke  since  1514*  Under  him  Wlirtemberg  experienced 
the  evils  of  French  influence  in  peace  as  well  as  of  French 
hostility  in  war.  The  extravagance  of  his  Court,  his  efforts  to 
ape  the  “  Grande  Monarque,”  to  make  the  Ludwigsburg  vie  with 
Versailles,  his  subjection  to  the  notorious  Countess  Christina 
von  Gravenitz,  brought  much  harm  on  his  subjects.  His 
successor  Charles  Alexander,  a  cousin,  who  had  till  then  ruled 
over  the  territory  of  Winnenden,  acquired  by  Eberhard  III 
in  1668,  was  not  much  of  an  improvement.  He  had  gone 
over  to  Roman  Catholicism  in  1712  partly  from  pique  at  the 
1  Cf.  pp.  245-246.  2  Chapter  II. 


i79°]  GERMANY  AND  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  371 


refusal  of  the  Committee  to  increase  his  appanage,  and  had 
not  his  rule  (1733-1737)  been  abruptly  closed  by  his  sudden 
death  he  would  have  attempted  to  overthrow  the  constitution 
by  a  coup  d'etat  in  which  he  hoped  for  Austrian  aid.  His 
eldest  son,  Charles  Eugene,  was  a  minor,  and  did  not  take  over 
the  government  till  1744,  having  been  educated  in  the  mean¬ 
time  at  the  Court  of  Berlin.  He  was  at  first  a  faithful  adherent 
of  Prussia,  but  his  extravagant  ways  and  his  love  for  the 
theatre,  for  indulging  his  architectural  fancies,  for  keeping  up  a 
considerable  state  and  a  luxurious  mode  of  living,  involved  him 
in  financial  necessities.  To  extricate  himself  he  concluded  a 
subsidy-treaty  with  Louis  XV  in  1752  by  which  he  placed 
6000  men  at  the  disposal  of  France.  In  the  Seven  Years’  War 
he  fulfilled  his  obligations  by  forcibly  impressing  five  regiments 
of  1000  men  each  in  deliberate  disregard  of  the  constitution;  a 
most  unpopular  measure,  as  the  indifferent  behaviour  of  the 
Wtirtemberg  regiments  at  Leuthen 1  proved.  The  Committee 
protested  against  this  action  and  appealed  in  July  1764  to  the 
Aulic  Council,  accusing  the  Duke  of  levying  heavy  poll-taxes 
without  the  consent  of  the  authorised  representatives  of  the 
taxpayers,  of  ill-treating  the  Church,  and  generally  of  denying 
justice.  The  Aulic  Council,  acting  with  a  most  unusual  pre¬ 
cipitation,  declared  in  favour  of  the  Estates  within  two  months 
of  receiving  the  appeal,  and  in  1766  the  Duke  had  to  dismiss 
his  minister  Montmartin.  In  1770  a  compromise  was  arranged, 
and  till  the  Duke’s  death  in  1793  2  Wtirtemberg  enjoyed  a  period 
of  peace  and  comparative  prosperity,  his  encouragement  of 
culture  and  intellectual  life  generally,  his  foundation  of  a  large 
library  and  of  the  so-called  “  Carlsacademie  ”  going  hand  in 
hand  with  the  usual  measures  by  which  a  “  benevolent  despot  ” 
sought  to  improve  the  manufactures,  agriculture,  trade  and 
revenues  of  his  dominions. 

Of  the  other  minor  states  there  are  not  many  which  call  for 
special  remark.  The  Franconian  branch  of  the  Hohenzollern 
had  ceded  its  territories  to  its  cousins  at  Berlin  just  before  the 
outbreak  of  war  in  1792.  The  Anhalt-Zerbst  line  became 
extinct  in  1793,  and  its  territories  were  divided  between  the 
other  branches  of  the  family  at  Bernberg,  Dessau  and  Kothen. 

1  Cf.  p.  226,  and  Oncken,  Friedrich  der  Grosse,  ii.  162. 

2  Charles  Eugene  was  succeeded  by  his  son,  Louis  Eugene,  who  died  in  May 
1795;  s.p.m. 


372  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1790 


Count  William  of  Lippe-Schaumburg  deserves  mention  as 
the  founder  of  the  famous  military  school  at  Wilhelmstein, 
at  which  Scharnhorst  was  educated.  A  typical  soldier-prince, 
he  did  with  his  peasants  in  Lippe-Btickeburg  on  a  small 
scale  what  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse- Cassel  did  on  a  larger,  and 
he  is  also  notable  for  his  reorganisation  of  the  Portuguese 
army  after  his  campaign  in  Portugal  in  1762.1  The  two 
lines  of  the  House  of  Reuss,  raised  to  the  rank  of  Princes  in 
1778  and  1790  respectively,  the  Schwarzburg  family,  divided 
between  Schwarzburg-Sondershausen  and  Schwarzburg-Rudol- 
stadt  in  1681,  Waldeck  and  Ilohenlohe  were  among  the 
larger  of  those  infinitesimal  principalities  which  complicate 
the  map  of  Germany  in  1792  and  whose  pretensions  to  in¬ 
dependence  and  to  sovereign  rights  contributed  so  much  to 
the  disunion  and  defencelessness  of  Germany.  One  family 
also  deserves  mention,  more  because  of  its  connection  with 
the  United  Provinces  than  on  account  of  its  part  in  the  affairs 
of  Germany,  that  of  Nassau.  After  a  variety  of  changes2  the 
position  of  head  of  the  family  had  passed  to  the  Nassau-Dietz 
branch,  which  had  recovered  the  Stadtholderate  of  the  United 
Provinces  in  1747.3  Of  the  ecclesiastical  states,  the  Free  Cities, 
and  the  Imperial  Knights,  it  might  be  enough  to  say  that  they 
were  in  1792  fully  ripe  in  the  annexations  they  were  shortly 
to  undergo.  Only  the  jealousy  and  rivalry  of  the  larger  states 
had  prevented  a  general  scramble  for  these  tempting  morsels 


1  Cf.  Oman,  Peninsjilar  War ,  ii.  p.  208. 

2  The  House  of  Nassau  had  split  up  into  two  branches  in  1255,  Walram  11  and 
Otto  1,  the  sons  of  Henry  n,  obtaining  respectively  the  territories  South  and  North  of 
the  Lahn.  In  1627,  on  the  death  of  Louis  II,  his  three  sons  divided  the  lands  of 
Walram’s  branch  into  the  Idstein,  Saarbriick-Usingen  and  Weilburg  lines.  Between 
1718  and  1775,  Charles  of  Nassau-Usingen  reunited  the  Idstein  territories  with 
Saarbrtick  and  Usingen,  and  his  sons  Charles  William  (1775-1803)  and  Frederick 
Augustus  (1803-1816)  obtained  acquisitions  of  territory  at  Luneville  and  ruled  their 
lands  in  common  with  those  of  their  cousin  Frederick  William  of  Nassau- Weilburg 
(1788-1816),  the  Duchy  of  Nassau  being  formed  by  the  union  of  the  two  lines  in 
1 S 1 6.  Meanwhile  Otto’s  line,  of  which  the  Orange-Nassau  line  in  the  Nether¬ 
lands  was  an  offshoot,  had  similarly  split  up  into  three  branches  on  the  death  of 
John  vi  (1606),  the  Hadamar  (extinct  1711),  Dillenburg  (extinct  1789),  and  Dietz 
lines.  This  last  branch  had  by  1792  reunited  all  the  possessions  of  the  line,  so  that 
William  v  of  Holland  (1751-1806)  was  also  a  member  of  the  Empire  as  Prince  of 
Nassau. 

3  On  the  death  of  William  in  of  England  (1702),  John  William  Friso  of  Nassau- 
Dietz  had  inherited  his  Netherlandish  possessions,  and  it  was  his  son  William  iv 
(I7H-I751)  who  was  chosen  as  Hereditary  Stadtholder  in  1747. 


1790]  GERMANY  AND  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  373 


taking  place  long  ago.  Directly  the  French  Revolution  pro¬ 
duced  the  necessary  disturbance  in  the  political  equilibrium  of 
Germany,  the  secularisation  of  the  Bishoprics,  the  “  mediatisa- 
tion  ”  of  the  Knights  and  the  annexation  of  the  Cities  were 
bound  to  come.  In  1792  four  Archbishops  (the  three 
Ecclesiastical  Electors  and  Salzburg),  sixteen  Bishops  and  about 
thirty  other  prelates  were  represented  in  the  Diet,  not  to 
mention  secularised  Bishoprics  such  as  Paderborn  and  Osna- 
briick. 

The  three  Ecclesiastical  Electors  in  this  year  were  Frederick 
Charles  Joseph  of  Erthal  at  Mayence  (elected  1774),  Clement 
Wenceslaus  of  Saxony  (son  of  Augustus  II,  elected  1768)  at 
Treves,  and  the  Archduke  Maximilian  Joseph  of  Austria 
(elected  1785)  at  Cologne.  The  Elector  of  Mayence  was  also 
Bishop  of  Worms  ;  the  Elector  of  Treves  held  Freising,  Ratisbon 
and  Augsburg  in  addition  to  his  Electorate ;  Maximilian 
of  Cologne  had  been  Bishop  of  Munster  since  1780.  More 
important  in  some  ways  than  any  of  these  Electors  was  Charles 
Dalberg,  Coadjutor  to  the  Elector  of  Mayence,  who  managed, 
thanks  to  the  Elector’s  official  position  as  Chancellor  of  the 
Empire,  to  exercise  a  considerable  influence  over  German 
politics.  For  the  rest,  the  Bishops  and  Abbots  were  for  the 
most  part  scions  of  noble  houses,  often  good  and  honest  rulers, 
but  as  a  rule  too  much  hampered  by  their  Chapters  to  do 
much  even  when  zealous  for  reform,  so  that  the  ecclesiastical 
states  were  on  the  whole  very  backward. 

Fifty-one1  Free  Cities  maintained  an  independent  existence 
in  1789,  but  many  of  them,  especially  among  the  thirty-one  in 
the  Swabian  Circle,  were  of  no  importance  whatever.  Of  the 
once-powerful  Hanseatic  League,  Bremen,  Liibeck  and 
Hamburg  still  maintained  a  commercial  union ;  but  of  the 
others  which  had  been  represented  at  the  last  Hansetag  at 
Liibeck  in  1669  only  Cologne  remained  a  Free  City.  Brunswick 
had  been  forced  to  submit  to  the  Duke  of  Brunswick.  Minden 
was  in  Prussian,  Dantzic  in  Polish  hands.  Osnabriick  had 
succumbed  to  its  Prince-Bishop,  Rostock  to  the  Duke  of 
Mecklenburg-Schwerin.  Frankfurt  on  Main  with  60,000  in¬ 
habitants,  Nuremberg  with  80,000,  Augsburg  and  Ulm  with 

1  The  matricular  list  of  1521  gives  a  total  of  eighty-four  cities,  since  when  several 
(e.g.  Pasel  and  Metz)  had  been  annexed  by  foreign  Powers  and  others  (e.g.  Donau- 
worth)  incorporated  by  neighbouring  states. 


374  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1790 


between  30,000  and  40,000  were  still  of  comparative  importance  ; 
but  even  in  them  there  was  little  real  municipal  life,  still  less 
any  political  union  between  one  and  another.  Had  the 
Emperor  been  able  to  bind  the  Free  Cities  to  him,  had  they 
and  the  Imperial  Knights  been  willing  to  sacrifice  the  shadow 
of  a  useless  independence  for  a  real  union  under  the  head  of 
the  Empire,  it  might  have  been  possible  to  make  “  Germany  ” 
something  more  than  a  geographical  expression ;  but  not  only 
was  the  jealousy  of  the  other  states  certain  to  thwart  any 
move  from  one  side  or  the  other,  the  narrow  and  obstinate 
localism  of  the  Cities  caused  them  to  cling  to  their  privileges 
and  their  separate  existence  and  condemned  them  to  decadence 
and  impotence. 

Indeed  it  was  with  edged  tools  that  the  Emperor  and 
Frederick  William  II  were  playing  in  1792  when  by  associating 
themselves  with  the  cause  of  the  Bourbons  they  gave  an 
excuse  for  an  attack  on  Germany  to  the  rising  tide  of  French 
national  feeling  with  which  the  Revolution  was  soon  to  become 
identified.  Disunited,  worse  than  disunited,  distracted  by 
jealousy  and  localism,  Germany  could  ill  afford  to  give  a 
foothold  within  her  borders  to  the  compact  force  which  the 
Republic  for  all  its  internal  commotions  wielded  as  a  factor 
in  the  European  situation. 


CHAPTER  XIX 


THE  FIRST  COALITION 

AS  has  been  already  mentioned,  it  was  over  the  questions 
of  Alsace  and  of  the  emigres  rather  than  through  the 
connection  between  the  Hapsburgs  and  the  Bourbons  that 
the  Revolution  actually  came  into  conflict  with  the  European 
Powers,  though  the  hostility  of  the  Revolutionary  party  in 
France  towards  Austria  was  largely  due  to  their  fear  of  inter¬ 
vention.  It  is  quite  true  that  the  first  steps  towards  inter¬ 
ference  taken  by  Leopold  were  of  the  nature  of  an  intervention 
in  the  cause  of  monarchy.  The  Note  issued  to  the  monarchs 
of  Europe  in  May  1791  did  not  do  more  than  call  attention  to 
the  fact  that  the  situation  of  the  King  of  France  was  a  matter 
of  concern  to  the  other  Powers,  and  at  the  time  Leopold  was 
honestly  trying  to  keep  the  Comte  d’Artois  and  the  rest  of  the 
emigres  in  check.  He  was  by  no  means  anxious  to  intervene 
and,  although  ready  to  do  what  he  could  by  diplomatic  means, 
dreaded  having  to  use  force.  The  flight  to  Varennes  (June 
1791)  was  undertaken  against  his  advice,  and  its  failure  forced 
his  hand.  While  negotiations  with  Prussia  were  carried  on  in 
hopes  of  arriving  at  an  alliance  on  definite  terms,  Leopold 
issued  the  “  Declaration  of  Padua  ”  (July  6th),  explaining  to  the 
other  monarchs  the  steps  he  proposed  to  take.  These  included 
the  recall  of  his  Ambassador,  the  collection  of  troops  on  the 
frontiers,  and  the  summoning  of  a  conference.  This  circular 
excited  great  indignation  in  France  and  made  popular  feeling, 
already  aroused  by  shelter  and  support  given  to  the  emigres 
by  the  Rhenish  Princes,  very  hostile  towards  Austria.  In 
August  1791  Leopold  and  Frederick  William  met  at  Pillnitz 
on  the  Elbe,  a  few  miles  above  Dresden,  and  the  Declaration 
which  they  issued  (Aug.  27th),  inviting  the  co-operation  of 
Europe  in  helping  the  King  of  France  to  “  lay  the  bases  of  a 
monarchical  government  in  liberty,”  served  to  still  further  fan 
the  flame  of  resentment  and  hostility  to  Austria.  “It  is  difficult 

375 


376  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1791 


and  dangerous,”  wrote  Lord  Auckland  to  Mr.  Pitt,1  “  for 
sovereigns  possessing  an  absolute  authority  to  become  the 
armed  mediators  of  a  free  constitution  and  a  moderated 
monarchy  to  France,”  and  the  anger  of  the  French  found  ex¬ 
pression  in  Isnard’s  declaration  that  “if  the  cabinets  of  foreign 
Courts  try  to  stir  up  a  war  of  Kings  against  France,  we  will 
stir  up  for  them  a  war  of  peoples  against  Kings”  (Nov.  1791). 
This  was  one  of  the  first  expressions  of  that  revolutionary 
propagandism  which  the  French  were  to  make  their  main 
instrument  of  attack  against  the  existing  European  system. 

For  the  time,  however,  the  crisis  seemed  averted ;  for  on 
September  21st  Louis  XVI  accepted  the  revised  constitution, 
and  Leopold  hailed  this  as  an  excuse  for  taking  no  further 
steps.  But  things  had  really  gone  too  far  already.  The  war¬ 
feeling  in  France  was  growing  daily  stronger.  The  Legislative 
Assembly,  which  had  on  October  1st  replaced  the  Constituent, 
was  dominated  by  the  more  extreme  party.  One  section,  it 
is  true,  desired  a  war  with  the  Ecclesiastical  Electors  and  with 
Austria  over  the  question  of  the  emigres ,  because  they  hoped 
it  might  show  up  the  necessity  for  a  strong  executive  and 
thereby  force  the  Assembly  to  increase  the  powers  and 
authority  of  the  King.  But  this  “  limited  liability  ”  war  which 
Narbonne2  and  the  “Feuillants”  in  general  desired  was  not 
the  object  of  the  Girondins.  Led  by  Brissot  and  Vergniaud 
they  wanted  a  real  war  against  Austria,  a  war  which  would 
force  Louis  to  choose  definitely  between  acquiescing  in  the 
Revolution  and  declaring  himself  its  enemy.  He  would  either 
have  to  place  himself  at  the  head  of  the  anti-Austrian  feeling 
which  was  gaining  ground  in  France,  or  he  would  have  to  show 
that  the  accusations  of  incivisme ,  of  disloyalty  to  France,  of 
preferring  the  emigre  and  the  foreigner  to  the  nation,  were 
really  well-grounded. 

In  November  1791,  Louis,  at  the  bidding  of  the  Assembly, 
formally  demanded  that  Leopold  should  disperse  the  emigre 
forces,  while  the  Elector  of  Treves  was  given  a  month  in  which 
to  comply  with  a  similar  request.  But  instead  of  taking  any 
steps  to  meet  the  wishes  of  the  French,  Leopold  laid  before  the 
Assembly  the  Resolution  ( Reichsschluss )  of  the  Diet,  that  the 
action  of  France  with  regard  to  Alsace  had  violated  the  Peace 

1  Dropmore  Papers ,  Hist .  MSS.  Commission,  vol.  ii.  p.  159. 

2  Appointed  War  Minister  in  December. 


1 792] 


THE  FIRST  COALITION 


377 


of  Westphalia  (Dec.  3rd).  On  December  24th  he  not  only 
refused  to  disperse  the  emigres ,  but  complained  of  the  efforts 
of  the  French  to  propagate  sedition  and  discontent  within  the 
Empire,  and  more  especially  in  Belgium.  It  was  hardly  likely 
that  the  Legislative  Assembly  would  accept  such  a  rebuke 
quietly,  and  their  announcement  that  Leopold’s  failure  to  give 
them  satisfaction  before  March  1st  would  be  regarded  as  a 
declaration  of  war  might  easily  have  been  predicted.  With  such 
attitudes  on  the  various  sides  war  was  only  a  question  of  time. 
On  January  17th,  1792,  the  Austrian  Conference  decided  to 
present  an  ultimatum  to  the  French,  demanding  that  the  orders 
to  assemble  three  armies  on  the  frontiers  should  be  cancelled, 
and  that  compensation  should  be  given  to  the  Pope  for  the  loss 
of  Avignon  and  to  the  Alsatian  Princes.  A  week  later,  orders 
were  given  to  mobilise  40,000  men  to  reinforce  the  garrisons  in 
the  Netherlands  and  in  Further  Austria.  Nor  did  the  Emperor 
neglect  the  chances  of  obtaining  the  assistance  of  other  Powers. 
On  February  7th  an  offensive  and  defensive  alliance  was 
concluded  between  Austria  and  Prussia,  pledging  both  parties 
to  assist  each  other  if  attacked,  or  in  case  of  internal  troubles, 
to  guarantee  the  integrity  of  Poland  and  a  “  free  constitution  ” 
for  that  country,  and  finally  to  promote  a  European  Concert 
for  the  settlement  of  French  affairs.  All  was  thus  in  train  for 
the  formation  of  a  coalition  against  France,  when,  on  the  last 
day  of  February,  Leopold  was  suddenly  seized  with  a  severe 
chill,  and  on  March  1st  he  died.  His  premature  death  was  a 
great  blow  to  Austria — indeed  to  Europe.  Had  he  been  at 
the  head  of  the  Coalition,  the  foolish  and  offensive  proclamation 
which  heralded  Brunswick’s  invasion  would  probably  have  never 
been  issued.  A  statesman  of  experience  and  capacity,  he  would 
have  restrained  the  emigres ,  and  would  have  had  far  more  chance 
of  keeping  the  Coalition  together  than  any  other  monarch  could 
have  had.  As  it  was,  the  Coalition  went  to  pieces  at  once  for 
want  of  a  real  leader.  PYancis  II,  Leopold’s  heir  and  successor, 
did  in  the  end  do  good  service  to  Austria  and  to  Europe ;  but 
he  had  not  the  strength  of  mind  or  the  experience  to  prevent 
Thugut  from  wrecking  the  Second  Coalition,  and  still  less  was  he 
fitted  in  1792  to  cope  with  such  a  problem  as  that  of  the  PYench 
Revolution.  So  far  as  the  First  Coalition  had  any  leader,  it  was 
Frederick  William  II,  who  was  neither  a  great  soldier  nor  a 
great  statesman,  though  he  fancied  himself  both,  and  who, 


3  73  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1792 


moreover,  having  always  one  eye  fixed  on  the  chances  of 
aggrandisement  in  Poland,  was  unable  to  devote  exclusively  to 
the  affairs  of  France  even  the  very  slender  capacities  as  a 
statesman  and  a  leader  with  which  he  was  endowed.  Mean¬ 
while,  Leopold’s  answer  had  brought  about  the  overthrow  of  the 
Feuillant  ministry,  and  in  their  place  Louis  had  been  forced  to 
accept  a  ministry  drawn  from  the  Girondin  party,  of  which  the 
leading  member  was  Dumouriez  (March  1792).  The  policy 
on  which  Dumouriez  pinned  his  faith  was  that  of  detach¬ 
ing  Prussia  from  the  side  of  Austria  by  reviving  the  old 
friendly  relations  between  Paris  and  Berlin.  Hoping  to  isolate 
Austria,  he  sent  Custine  to  Berlin  and  Talleyrand  to  London, 
while  he  spared  no  effort  to  keep  the  minor  states  of  Germany 
from  making  common  cause  with  the  Emperor. 

When,  in  April  1792,  a  reply  was  received  from  Austria, 
in  which  Kaunitz  definitely  refused  to  diminish  the  warlike 
preparations,  and  alleged  as  his  reason  the  menace  to  Belgium 
of  the  Jacobin  propagandism,  only  one  course  was  possible. 
On  April  20th  the  Assembly  declared  war  on  “  the  King  of 
Plungary  and  Bohemia,”  1  and  Belgium  was  at  once  attacked  by 
four  converging  columns.  The  invasion  proved  a  complete 
fiasco,  not  because  the  Austrian  preparations  for  defence  were 
specially  efficient,  but  through  the  disorderliness,  insubordination 
and  utter  inefficiency  of  the  Volunteers  who  composed  a  large 
part  of  the  invading  forces.  But  the  Austrians  were  in  no 
condition  to  profit  by  the  disorderly  retreat  of  their  adversaries. 
They  had  also  to  wait  for  their  Prussian  allies,  and  the  slowness 
with  which  the  Prussian  mobilisation  was  being  carried  out 
was  a  proof  of  the  decline  in  the  efficiency  of  the  Prussian 
army. 

The  failure  of  the  invasion  of  Belgium  had  produced  wild 
excitement  and  much  disorder  at  Paris.  Accusations  of 
treachery  were  brought  against  the  Court  and  the  generals, 
and  it  was  just  this  moment  that  Louis  XVI  chose  for  refusing 
to  sign  a  decree  against  those  priests  who  had  not  accepted  the 
Civil  Constitution  of  the  Clergy,  and  to  dismiss  his  Girondin 
ministry.  The  result  was  the  riot  of  June  20th,  while  three 

1  Francis  n.  was  not  elected  Emperor  till  July  14th,  and  the  French  hoped  to 
keep  the  Empire  out  of  the  war  by  thus  treating  Francis  merely  as  the  head  of  the 
Hapsburgs  and  make  it  possible  for  its  members  to  remain  neutral ;  which,  with  the 
exception  of  Flesse-Cassel,  they  all  did. 


1 7  9  2] 


THE  FIRST  COALITION 


379 


weeks  later,  on  July  nth,  the  Assembly  declared  the  country  in 
danger. 

By  this  time  the  Austrians  and  Prussians  were  at  last  ready 
to  take  the  field.  The  principal  attack  was  committed  to  the 
Duke  of  Brunswick  with  42,000  Prussians,  who  was  to  advance 
into  Champagne  from  Coblence,  supported  on  the  left  by 
14,000  Austrians  from  the  Breisgau  and  10,000  emigres  and 
Hessians.  On  his  right  another  Austrian  corps  (15,000)  was  to 
advance  against  Thionville,  while  yet  a  third  under  Albert  of 
Saxe-Teschen  proceeded  to  lay  siege  to  Lille.  The  Allies 
heralded  their  advance  by  publishing  in  the  name  of  the  Duke 
of  Brunswick  the  famous  proclamation  of  July  27th,  which 
completed  the  rage  and  exasperation  of  the  French  at  this 
intervention  in  their  affairs.  It  was  really  the  work  of  the 
emigres,1  approved  by  Frederick  William,  accepted  by  Francis  II 
without  enthusiasm  and  by  Brunswick  with  great  misgivings. 

It  was  in  the  last  days  of  July  that  the  invasion  began. 
On  paper  the  invading  armies  made  a  great  show,  but  in  the 
field  they  were  much  less  formidable.  Both  Austrians  and 
Prussians  suffered  from  insufficient  organisation,  bad  staff-work 
and  all  but  non-existent  administrative  services.  The  com¬ 
missariat  was  especially  inefficient,  and  if  the  Prussians  main¬ 
tained  the  rigid  regimental  discipline  of  Frederick’s  days, 
routine  and  parade  had  with  them  usurped  the  place  of 
practice.  The  Austrians,  as  in  1741,  had  had  more  recent 
experience  of  war  but  had  not  turned  its  lessons  to  much 
profit.  Nor  did  the  commander’s  merits  make  up  for  the 
shortcomings  of  his  army.  Brunswick,  anxious  not  to  com¬ 
promise  his  reputation,  was  not  altogether  inclined  to  an 
advance  on  Paris.  He  would  have  preferred  the  systematic 
reduction  of  the  fortresses  on  the  Meuse  ;  but  Frederick  William, 
relying  quite  unjustifiably  on  the  assurances  of  the  emigre's  that 
France  would  really  welcome  the  invaders,  overruled  this 
cautious  plan.  The  Prussians  began  well  enough.  A  cavalry 
skirmish  on  August  19th  saw  the  advance-guard  of  the  French 
army  of  the  Centre  driven  back  in  confusion.  On  the  20th, 
Longwy  was  summoned  ;  on  the  23rd  it  surrendered.  Verdun 
capitulated  on  September  2nd  after  an  equally  feeble  resistance. 
This  seemed  to  open  the  road  to  Paris,  and  on  September  5th 
the  Prussians  crossed  the  Meuse  on  their  way  to  Chalons.  To 

1  Cf.  Lord  E.  Fitzmaurice’s  Life  of  Brunswick. 


380  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1792 


oppose  them  Dumouriez  hurried  to  the  front  and  took  com¬ 
mand  of  the  troops  collected  at  Sedan.  With  them  he  took 
post  in  the  wooded  hills  of  the  Argonne  and  occupied  the 
passage  of  Les  Islettes  by  which  Brunswick  intended  to  cross. 
Meanwhile  Kellermann  was  pushing  up  from  Metz  with  the 
22,000  men  of  the  Army  of  the  Centre  to  join  his  colleague. 
Brunswick  displayed  a  great  want  of  energy.  Instead  of  forcing 
the  Les  Islettes  position  and  so  bringing  Dumouriez  to  battle 
before  Kellermann  could  join,  he  tried  to  turn  the  position  by 
seizing  another  of  the  passes  of  the  Argonnes,  and  thus  let 
Dumouriez  fall  back  behind  the  Aisne  and  take  up  a  position 
near  St.  Menehould,  threatening  the  Prussian  flank  should  they 
continue  their  advance  on  Paris.  On  September  19th  Kellermann 
arrived,  and  next  day  occurred  the  celebrated  skirmish  which 
has  been  dignified  by  the  name  of  the  “  battle  ”  of  Valmy.  The 
action  was  confined  to  a  cannonade,  in  which  the  excellence  of 
the  French  artillery  and  the  firm  attitude  of  the  old  troops  of 
the  Line,  who  formed  the  bulk  of  their  army,1  brought  Brunswick 
to  a  standstill.  Finding  the  French  position  too  strong  for  a 
direct  attack,  he  had  not  enough  confidence  in  himself  or  his 
army  to  continue  his  advance  and  risk  leaving  the  French  on 
his  line  of  communications.  He  came  to  a  halt  at  La  Lune 
and  waited  there  for  a  fortnight,  the  condition  of  his  army 
becoming  daily  worse.  The  administration  broke  down  com¬ 
pletely  under  the  strain  of  war ;  the  troops,  excellent  as  they 
were  on  the  parade  -  ground,  proved  quite  unfitted  for  the 
practical  work  of  a  campaign,  sickness  decimated  their  ranks, 
and  Brunswick  was  in  the  end  lucky  to  secure  an  unmolested 
retreat.  This  he  achieved  by  means  of  negotiations  with 
Dumouriez,  who,  a  politician  quite  as  much  as  a  soldier,  still 
clung  to  his  hopes  of  detaching  Prussia  from  Austria.  Thus  he 
was  ready  to  let  Brunswick  withdraw  from  a  really  very  perilous 
position  in  return  for  the  evacuation  of  Longwy  and  Verdun. 
This  arrangement  also  enabled  Dumouriez  to  transfer  himself  and 
his  army  to  the  Austrian  Netherlands.  The  Austrians  had  already 
raised  the  siege  of  Thionville,  and  on  October  7th  the  Duke  of 
Saxe-Teschen  abandoned  his  futile  attack  on  Lille  and  fell  back 
to  Mons,  ready  to  dispute  the  invaders’  advance  along  a  line 
from  Mons  by  Charleroi  to  Namur.  On  November  6th  Dumouriez, 

1  Cf.  Ilauterive,  V Amide  sous  la  Revolution,  pp.  245-246,  and  Chuquet,  Les 
G uerres  de  la  Revolution,  ii.  247  ff. 


1 79  2] 


THE  FIRST  COALITION 


3S1 


following  him  up,  attacked  and  carried  his  main  position  at 
Jemappes,  a  stubborn  fight  resulting  in  the  complete  defeat 
of  the  Austrians.  The  results  of  the  victory  were  enormous. 
Mons  (Nov.  7th),  Brussels  (Nov.  13th),  Malines,  Liege,  Namur, 
Antwerp  capitulated  one  after  another  almost  without  resistance. 
Saxe-Teschen  withdrew  the  relics  of  his  forces  towards  Liege. 
The  people  welcomed  the  French  as  deliverers.  On  November 
1 6th  a  decree  of  the  Legislative  Assembly  declared  the  Scheldt 
open  to  commerce,  thus  defying  the  Barrier  Treaty  and  the 
Treaty  of  Munster,  to  say  nothing  of  more  recent  compacts. 
On  the  19th  another  decree  promised  fraternity  and  assistance 
to  any  nation  engaged  in  recovering  its  liberty ;  but  it  throws  a 
rather  curious  light  on  these  professions  that,  much  to  the 
consternation  of  its  people,  on  December  13th  Belgium  was 
declared  part  of  France,  as  Savoy  and  Nice  had  been  a  month 
earlier.  Austrian  rule  was  most  unpopular  in  the  Netherlands ; 
but  the  Clericals,  who  had  so  vigorously  opposed  Joseph’s 
reforms,  were  hardly  the  people  to  welcome  the  Rights  of  Man 
and  the  reign  of  Reason.  Meanwhile,  on  the  Middle  Rhine 
Custine,  with  the  Army  of  the  Vosges,  had  been  carrying  all 
before  him,  spreading  alarm  all  through  the  states  of  Southern 
Germany.  On  September  30th  he  entered  Spires.  Five  days 
later  Worms  and  Philipsbourg  were  occupied.  Encouraged  by 
the  news  of  the  check  to  Brunswick,  Custine  resolved  to  push  on 
into  Germany.  Mayence  surrendered  at  the  first  summons  (Oct. 
2 1st),  and  the  French  crossing  the  Rhine  were  received  warmly 
at  Frankfort.  Only  the  timely  arrival  of  the  contingent  of  Hesse- 
Cassel  saved  Coblence  from  falling  into  French  hands  (Oct.  26th). 

It  was  in  this  part  of  Germany  that  there  was  most  chance 
for  the  Revolutionary  propaganda  to  obtain  a  firm  foothold. 
Custine  announced  that  he  was  making  war  on  the  despots,  not 
on  the  people ;  that  he  had  come  to  make  them  free,  to  let  them 
choose  their  own  form  of  government,  and  to  help  them  throw 
off  the  oppressive  yoke  under  which  they  were  groaning.  At 
first  these  declarations  were  believed  and  the  population 
welcomed  the  French ;  for  it  was  only  the  richer  classes,  the 
clergy,  the  nobles  and  the  big  merchants  who  had  to  suffer 
anything  at  their  hands.  A  Convention  was  summoned  to 
meet  at  Mayence  to  settle  the  government  of  the  conquered 
territory,  and  under  the  influence  of  George  Forster,  one  of 
those  Germans  in  whom  the  Revolution  had  awakened  senti- 


382  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1793 


ments  akin  to  those  expressed  in  England  by  Charles  James 
Fox,  it  hastened  to  vote  the  union  of  the  country  between  the 
Oueich  and  the  Nahe  with  France  (March  1 8th,  1793).  The 
idea  of  extending  France  to  her  “  natural  frontiers  ”  had  by  now 
taken  firm  hold  of  the  French  imagination,  and  the  delegates 
of  the  National  Convention  of  Rhenish  Germany  received  a 
hearty  welcome  at  Paris. 

By  this  time  events  had  moved  apace.  On  the  day  of  the 
affair  of  Valmy  the  National  Convention  had  met  at  Paris  and 
declared  France  a  Republic.  On  January  21st  the  Republican 
party  had  burnt  its  boats  by  the  execution  of  the  King,  and  on 
February  1st  it  had  followed  this  act  up  by  declaring  war  on 
England  and  Holland,  which  until  then  had  maintained  a  strict 
neutrality.  It  was  not  merely  the  execution  of  the  King  which 
alarmed  Europe  and  united  practically  all  the  Powers,  Denmark, 
Sweden  and  Switzerland  alone  standing  aloof,  in  a  Coalition  to 
oppose  the  Republic.  The  violent  actions  and  language  of  the 
Assembly,  its  obvious  disposition  to  ignore  the  received  rules  of 
international  relations,  its  interference  with  the  affairs  of  its 
neighbours,  its  open  adoption  and  propagation  of  revolutionary 
doctrines,  the  encouragement  given  to  the  discontented  and  dis¬ 
affected  in  every  state,  the  disregard  displayed  for  all  treaties  and 
conventions,  all  these  drove  the  alarmed  monarchs  of  Europe 
into  taking  arms  in  defence  of  their  thrones  and  their  territories. 

As  might  have  been  expected,  the  relations  between  Austria 
and  Prussia  had  not  been  improved  by  the  events  of  1792. 
Prussia  complained  that  Austria  had  failed  to  fulfil  her  promises  ; 
Austria  that  Brunswick  had  secured  an  unmolested  retreat  at 
the  expense  of  his  ally.  Moreover,  events  in  Eastern  Europe 
had  served  to  increase  their  dissatisfaction.  The  patriotic  party 
in  Poland  had  in  May  1791  introduced  a  new  and  revised 
constitution,  abolishing  the  elective  monarchy,  the  liberum  veto , 
and  the  various  other  anomalies  which  had  contributed  so  much 
to  the  decadence  of  the  nation.  This  was  accepted  by  the  Diet 
at  Warsaw,  but  not  without  opposition,  and  the  malcontents, 
forming  themselves  into  the  Confederation  of  Targovitsa, 
appealed  to  Russia  as  the  guarantor  of  the  old  constitution 
(May  1792).  Catherine,  eagerly  grasping  at  the  pretext  for 
intervention,  sent  Suvorov  and  a  large  army  to  the  aid  of  the 
Confederates.  Austria  might  have  intervened  on  behalf  of  the 
new  constitution,  which  offered  a  chance  of  rescuing  Poland 


1 793] 


THE  FIRST  COALITION 


383 


from  the  grip  of  Russia,  if  she  could  have  got  Prussia  to  join 
her;  but  Frederick  William  would  not  hear  of  it,  and  Austria, 
paralysed  by  the  death  of  Leopold  and  the  troubles  with 
France,  had  no  alternative  but  to  conclude  a  treaty  with  Russia 
(July  17 92),  guaranteeing  the  old  constitution  of  Poland. 
Russian  troops  now  poured  into  Poland  and  put  down  the 
patriotic  party,  while  Catherine  concluded  a  treaty  with  Prussia 
(Jan.  23rd,  1793)  for  the  Second  Partition  of  Poland.  By  a 
mixture  of  force  and  bribery  the  Diet  was  forced  to  give  way 
to  the  demands  of  the  invading  Powers :  on  July  22nd  it  signed 
a  treaty  with  Russia  and  on  September  25th  that  which  allotted 
to  Prussia  2000  square  miles  of  Polish  territory,  mainly  in  Posen 
and  Great  Poland,  but  including  the  much  coveted  Dantzic  and 
Thorn.  It  is  this  which  explains  the  very  small  part  taken  by 
Prussia  in  the  West  during  1793.  The  certainty  of  territorial 
aggrandisement  in  the  East  was  irresistible  and  drew  Frederick 
William  away  from  a  quarter  in  which  his  hopes  of  acquisitions 
were  rapidly  growing  fainter;  but  this  neglect  of  the  West  for 
the  East  was  in  no  small  measure  responsible  for  the  loss  of  the 
Prussian  territories  West  of  the  Rhine  a  couple  of  years  later. 

Dumouriez  opened  the  campaign  of  1793  in  February  by  an 
advance  into  Holland,  moving  by  Dortrecht  upon  Leyden  and 
so  for  Amsterdam.  On  his  right,  Miranda  laid  siege  to 
Maastricht,  while  Valence  took  up  a  position  on  the  Roer  to 
cover  these  operations  against  any  interference  from  the 
Austrians.  At  first  things  went  well.  Breda  fell  after  a  some¬ 
what  feeble  defence.  Dumouriez  took  Gertruydenberg  and  was 
on  the  point  of  entering  Holland  when  the  news  reached  him 
(March  3rd)  that  the  Austrians  under  the  Prince  of  Coburg- 
Saalfeld  had  fallen  on  Valence  near  Aix-la-Chapelle,  beaten 
him  badly  and  driven  him  in  on  Liege  in  disorder.  Miranda, 
thus  exposed,  had  to  raise  the  siege  of  Maastricht  and  to  retire 
by  Tongres  on  Louvain,  while  a  Prussian  corps  secured  Venloo. 
Dumouriez,  his  communications  thus  endangered,  fell  back 
behind  the  line  of  the  Demer  with  his  army  in  a  state  of 
confusion  and  demoralisation.  The  practice  of  the  French 
“liberators”  of  Belgium  had  not  altogether  corresponded  to 
their  professions,  and  their  misconduct  and  exactions  had 
alienated  even  their  own  partisans.  The  discipline  of  the  army 
was  in  a  deplorable  condition,  and  the  general,  who  had  long 
been  at  odds  with  the  Convention  and  with  the  Ministry  of 


384  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1793 

War,  was  already  contemplating  desertion.  One  last  effort  he 
made,  attacking  the  Austrian  positions  at  Neerwinden  on 
March  18th.  It  was  a  desperate  fight,  but  the  defeat  of  Miranda 
on  the  French  left  decided  the  battle  against  Dumouriez. 
Beaten  again  in  another  action  near  Louvain  three  days  later, 
he  fell  back  behind  the  Scheldt  and,  failing  in  his  efforts  to  get 
his  army  to  declare  against  the  Convention,  finally  deserted  to 
the  Austrians  on  April  5  th.  Thus  left  in  the  lurch,  his  army 
withdrew  behind  the  frontier.  Now  was  the  time  for  a  really 
vigorous  effort  by  the  Allies,  and  Brunswick  strongly  urged 
Frederick  William  to  co-operate  heartily  with  the  Austrians  to 
secure  the  Netherlands  and  break  through  the  French  defences. 
But  Frederick  William  cared  far  more  for  Poland  than  for  the 
French  war,  and  failed  to  support  Austria  with  all  his  strength. 
The  declaration  of  war  by  the  Diet  of  the  Empire  (March  22nd) 
did  not  add  materially  to  the  strength  of  the  Coalition,  and 
neither  the  operations  in  the  Alps  nor  in  the  Pyrenees  exercised 
any  real  influence  on  the  fate  of  the  campaign.  Holland 
proved  an  ally  of  little  value,  and  the  unwise  economy  which 
had  led  Pitt  to  cut  down  the  peace  establishment  of  Great 
Britain  almost  to  vanishing  point  prevented  England  from 
putting  into  the  field  a  force  adequate  to  the  emergency.  It 
is  a  platitude  to  say  that  had  the  Coalition  displayed  in  1793 
anything  approaching  the  resolution  and  vigour  the  Powers 
of  Europe  were  to  show  in  1814  and  1815,  the  successful 
march  to  Paris  might  have  been  anticipated  by  twenty  years. 
For  France  was  in  utter  confusion.  The  army  seemed  to  have 
lost  all  cohesion  ;  there  was  no  real  executive  ;  the  Royalists  had 
risen  at  Toulon,  at  Lyons,  and  in  La  Vendee;  the  Girondins 
were  taking  arms  in  Normandy  and  Guienne.  Anarchy, 
administrative  chaos  and  civil  strife  seemed  to  leave  France 
helpless  at  the  feet  of  the  Coalition.  It  was  not  in  the 
Netherlands  only  that  things  had  gone  badly.  Before  the  end 
of  1792  Brunswick  had  recovered  Frankfort,  and  in  March 
Custine,  who  had  taken  post  on  the  Nahe  between  Bingen  and 
Kreuznach,  was  outflanked  and  driven  from  his  positions  by 
the  Prussians,  who  had  crossed  the  Rhine  (March  27th)  lower 
down  at  St.  Goar.  He  fell  back  to  Worms  and  thence  to  Landau 
(April  1st),  completely  abandoning  all  his  conquests  save 
Mayence,  which  made  a  desperate  resistance.  The  siege  was 
begun  in  April,  but  not  till  July  23rd  did  the  brave  garrison 


1793] 


THE  FIRST  COALITION 


335 


capitulate  and  evacuate  the  city,  taking  with  them  those  of  the 
inhabitants  who  had  espoused  their  cause.  Meanwhile  in  the 
Netherlands  the  Anglo-Austrians  had  stormed  the  French  camp 
at  Famars  (May  25th)  and  driven  them  back  to  Bouchain. 
This  success  allowed  Coburg  to  besiege  and  take  Conde  (July 
1 2th)  and  Valenciennes  (July  28th). 

The  Allies  had  the  ball  at  their  feet.  Had  their  statesmen 
succeeded  in  subordinating  individual  ambitions  to  the  common 
end,  had  their  commanders  looked  to  more  than  immediate  and 
local  advantage,  had  they  displayed  any  grasp  of  the  general 
strategic  situation,  it  would  have  gone  hard  with  France.  But 
it  was  a  war  of  governments,  not  of  peoples.  There  was  no 
enthusiasm  for  the  war  in  Germany.  Even  the  prospect  of 
recovering  Alsace  and  Lorraine  from  France  failed  to  arouse 
any  keenness  or  interest.  It  mattered  little  to  the  inhabitants 
of  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine  what  yoke  they  laboured  under. 
The  Southern  states  supported  the  war  but  languidly,  and  it 
was  being  fought  too  far  away  from  Austria  and  from  Prussia 
for  its  importance  to  be  realised  in  those  countries.  Even  the 
rulers  and  their  ministers,  who  might  have  been  expected  to 
understand  the  issues  involved,  failed  to  grasp  the  importance 
of  cohesion  and  of  loyal  and  energetic  co-operation.  Thus  the 
jealousies,  the  divisions,  the  delays  and  the  mistaken  strategy 
of  the  Allies  saved  France,  and  gave  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety  time  to  get  firmly  seated  in  power,  to  provide  a  really 
strong  executive,  to  build  up  and  reorganise  a  most  efficient 
army  out  of  the  relics  of  the  really  excellent  troops  of  the 
ancien  regime ,  the  enthusiastic  “Volunteers  of  ’91  and  ’92/’ 
who  only  needed  discipline  and  experience,  and  the  vast  hordes 
of  men  placed  at  their  disposal  by  the  levee  en  masse.  During 
this  critical  time  the  Allies  were  engaged  in  the  pleasing  but 
illusory  task  of  dividing  between  themselves  the  acquisitions 
they  were  to  make  from  France.  Thugut,  who  had  replaced 
Philip  Cobenzl  as  the  principal  minister  of  Francis  II,  when 
the  latter  was  dismissed  on  account  of  the  Second  Partition  of 
Poland,  which  he  had  failed  to  prevent  or  to  turn  to  Austria’s 
profit,  was  keenly  set  on  extending  the  Netherlands  to  the 
Somme,  or  annexing  Bavaria  to  compensate  Austria  for  Prussia’s 
gains  in  Poland — the  Elector  was  to  receive  Alsace-Lorraine, 
which  the  Prussians  were  to  conquer.  England  thought  more 
of  securing  her  commerce  by  capturing  Dunkirk  than  of  the 

25 


386  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1793 

defeat  of  the  main  armies  of  the  enemy.  Prussia,  more  con¬ 
cerned  for  her  own  acquisitions  in  Poland  than  for  the  success 
of  the  common  cause,  was  negotiating  with  France  behind 
the  back  of  her  allies ;  for  the  party  which  favoured  the  policy 
of  a  Franco-Prussian  alliance  numbered  among  its  adherents 
Prince  Henry,  Count  Haugwitz,  General  Mollendorf  and  the 
King’s  favourite  Lucchesini,  while  Brunswick  himself  so  far 
favoured  the  idea  as  to  lend  but  a  languid  support  to  the  opera¬ 
tions  of  Wlirmser’s  Austrians  in  Alsace. 

Thus  the  critical  month  of  August  slipped  past.  The 
Anglo-Hanoverians  separated  from  Coburg  to  lay  siege  to 
Dunkirk  after  clearing  the  enemy  from  their  path  at  Lincelles 
(Aug.  1 8th),  Coburg  and  the  main  body,  though  within  160 
miles  of  Paris,  set  about  besieging  the  comparatively  un¬ 
important  Le  Quesnoy,  while  Brunswick  remained  inactive  in 
the  Palatinate,  never  utilising  the  chance  which  the  dis¬ 
organisation  of  the  French  Armies  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Moselle 
offered  him.  This  gave  Carnot  time  to  reinforce  the  armies 
charged  with  the  defence  of  the  French  frontiers  and  to  place 
more  efficient  officers  at  their  heads.  Between  September  6th 
and  8th  Houchard  cleared  away  the  Hanoverians  and  Dutch 
who  at  Hondschoote  and  Menin  were  covering  the  Duke  of 
York’s  operations  against  Dunkirk,  though  he  failed  to  prevent 
the  safe  retreat  of  the  besiegers  to  Furnes.  A  little  later  the 
Austrians,  who  after  taking  Le  Quesnoy  (Sept,  nth)  had 
laid  siege  to  Maubeuge,  were  attacked  by  Houchard’s  suc¬ 
cessor,  Jourdan,  at  Wattignies,  and  after  two  days  of  fierce 
fighting  (Oct.  15th  to  16th)  were  driven  from  their  position, 
forced  to  raise  the  siege  and  to  retire  behind  the  Sambre 
to  join  the  Duke  of  York.  An  advance  into  West  Flan¬ 
ders,  however,  proved  less  successful.  Nieuport  beat  off  all 
attacks,  and  in  November  the  French  retired  behind  their  own 
frontier. 

Meanwhile  the  position  on  the  Middle  Rhine  had  undergone 
great  changes.  The  necessity  of  taking  Mayence  had  prevented 
the  Allies  from  following  up  Custine’s  retreat,  and  when  its  fall 
set  them  free  the  want  of  harmony  between  the  Austrians  and 
the  Prussians  came  to  the  assistance  of  the  French.  Wurmser, 
the  Austrian  commander,  was  most  anxious  to  advance  into 
Alsace ;  but  Brunswick  refused  to  co-operate,  having  no  intention 
of  conquering  Alsace  from  France  to  restore  it  to  the  rule  of 


1793] 


THE  FIRST  COALITION 


337 


the  Hapsburgs.  At  last  Wiirmser  advanced  alone  against  the 
Army  of  the  Rhine,  and  pushing  Southward  drove  it  from  the 
Weissembourg  lines  (Oct.  13th)  and  forced  it  back  over  the 
Lauter  in  confusion.  Had  Brunswick  supported  Wiirmser 
properly  they  might  have  had  Strassburg  on  which  the  French 
had  retired ;  but  neither  Brunswick  nor  Frederick  William 
would  agree  to  a  winter  campaign  in  Alsace,  and  the  favourable 
moment  slipped  by.  St.  Just  and  Le  Bas,  the  commissioners 
sent  by  the  Assembly  to  purge  and  reform  the  Army  of  the 
Rhine,  set  about  the  restoration  of  discipline  with  a  vigour 
which  soon  produced  satisfactory  results.  In  Pichegru  it 
received  a  commander  of  quite  a  different  stamp  from  the 
incompetent  officers  till  then  at  its  head ;  and  with  the  not  less 
brilliant  Hoche  sent  by  Carnot  to  command  the  Army  of  the 
Moselle  a  change  was  not  long  in  coming.  The  Allied  forces, 
spread  out  in  a  long  and  straggling  line  from  Kaiserslautern  to 
Flaguenau,  gave  Hoche  and  Pichegru  the  chance  they  wanted. 
Attempting  to  relieve  Landau  by  a  direct  attack  on  the 
Prussians,  Hoche  was  checked  at  Kaiserslautern  (Nov.  28th  to 
30th)  and  forced  to  change  his  plan.  Pichegru  had  taken  ad¬ 
vantage  of  Hoche’ s  diversion  to  advance  against  Wiirmser,  and 
Hoche,  instead  of  operating  by  himself,  moved  Southward  to  help 
Pichegru  by  falling  upon  Wiirmser’s  right.  Several  days  of 
severe  fighting  (Dec.  15th  to  24th)  saw  the  Austrians  driven  from 
Haguenau  and  Frceschwiller  in  upon  their  lines  in  front  of 
Landau.  The  culminating  battle  was  on  December  26th,  when 
the  two  French  armies,  united  under  the  command  of  Floche, 
managed  to  storm  the  Geisberg,  the  key  to  the  Austrian 
position.  Only  the  arrival  of  Brunswick,  whose  inactivity  had 
allowed  Hoche  to  join  Pichegru  unhindered  and  was  therefore 
the  chief  cause  of  the  disaster,  enabled  the  Austrians  to  avoid 
a  complete  rout.  As  it  was,  the  French  relieved  Landau 
and  recovered  Worms  and  Spires,  the  Austrians  recrossed  the 
Rhine  at  Philipsburg  (Dec.  30th),  the  Prussians  fell  back  to 
Oppenheim  to  cover  Mayence,  and  the  Palatinate  West  of  the 
Rhine  passed  again  into  French  hands. 

For  these  reverses  the  Coalition  had  chiefly  itself  to  thank. 
The  slackness  of  the  Prussians,  Thugut’s  greed  for  territorial 
acquisitions,  Coburg’s  want  of  energy  and  strategic  insight,  the 
unreadiness  of  England  for  war,  the  feebleness  of  the  efforts 
made  by  most  of  the  members  of  the  Empire,  were  preventable 


383  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1794 


causes,  even  if  the  energy  of  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety, 
the  organising  powers  of  Carnot,  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Revol¬ 
utionary  armies,  and  the  talents  of  the  young  generals  to  whom 
a  great  career  had  been  opened  were  factors  outside  the  control 
of  the  Allies.  But  even  now  they  had  not  learnt  their  lessons. 
Unity  of  purpose,  energy  and  sincere  co-operation  were  as 
conspicuous  by  their  absence  in  1794  as  in  1793.  All  Pitt’s 
efforts  could  not  induce  Prussia  to  do  her  duty  by  her  allies. 
Already  Frederick  William,  tired  of  the  war  and  anxious  to 
have  his  hands  free  to  deal  with  Poland,  declared  that  he  would 
withdraw  from  the  Coalition  unless  the  Empire  undertook  to 
support  his  army.  For  the  Empire  to  do  so  was  obviously 
impossible ;  but  England  concluded  a  subsidy-treaty  with 
Prussia  in  May  by  which  the  King  promised  to  put  62,000  men 
at  the  disposal  of  Great  Britain,  a  promise  which  he  did  not 
fulfil  in  the  spirit.  With  Brunswick  and  with  Hesse-Cassel, 
Pitt  also  concluded  subsidy-treaties ;  but  he  was  to  have  only 
too  clear  proof  that  it  is  the  very  falsest  economy  which  so 
reduces  a  country’s  forces  in  peace  that  in  war-time  she 
must  depend  on  raw  recruits  and  hired  foreigners  to  fight 
her  battles.  The  Austrian  army  also  was  not  in  as  good 
a  condition  as  it  might  have  been.  The  Emperor  was  in 
nominal  command,  but  he  had  no  military  capacity  ;  and  though 
several  of  the  other  generals  were  good  divisional  leaders,  there 
was  no  really  competent  commander-in-chief  and  bad  Staff-work 
was  responsible  for  an  absence  of  accuracy  and  precision  in 
carrying  out  the  plans  decided  upon.  In  Thugut,  Francis 
possessed  a  minister  who  had  at  least  the  merits  of  determina¬ 
tion  and  resolution ;  but  he  was  most  unpopular  with  the  great 
nobles  who  held  the  chief  places  at  the  Court  of  Vienna,  and 
the  internal  condition  of  the  affairs  of  Austria1  was  hardly  a 
source  of  strength  to  the  Coalition. 

The  plan  adopted  by  the  Allies  for  1794  was  the  work  of  an 
Austrian  officer  whose  name  was  to  become  unpleasantly  familiar 
to  British  ears  before  his  errors  and  misfortunes  reached  their 
climax  at  Ulm.  General  Mack’s  scheme2  was  that  the  main 
body,  85,000  strong,  under  Saxe-Coburg,  should  advance 
between  the  Sambre  and  the  Scheldt  and  open  a  path  into 
Picardy  by  the  capture  of  Landregies.  It  was  to  be  supported 

1  Cf.  Dropmore  MSS.  ii.  pp.  614-636. 

2  Ibid.  ii.  p.  505,  cf.  p.  525. 


1794] 


THE  FIRST  COALITION 


389 


on  its  flanks  by  smaller  corps,  that  on  its  right  under  Clerfayt 
stretching  from  the  Scheldt  to  the  sea,  that  on  its  left  under 
Kaunitz  and  Beaulieu  from  the  Sambre  to  the  Moselle,  while 
50,000  more  troops  under  Saxe-Teschen  were  to  be  collected  on 
the  Moselle  in  the  hopes  of  the  Prussian  aid  which  the  Anglo- 
Prussian  convention  seemed  to  have  secured  for  the  Allies. 
To  oppose  them  Carnot  gave  Pichegru  command  of  the  Army 
of  the  North,  and  arranged  for  the  organisation  of  a  new  army, 
with  that  of  the  Ardennes  as  its  nucleus,  to  co-operate  with  him. 
After  some  skirmishing  the  siege  of  Landregies  was  begun  on 
April  17th;  but  a  simultaneous  advance  of  the  French  against 
both  flanks  resulted  in  Pichegru’s  turning  the  right  of  the 
Allies,  driving  in  Wallmoden  from  Courtrai,  forcing  Clerfayt 
back  on  Tournai,  and  taking  Menin.  Despite  this,  Landregies 
fell  on  April  30th ;  but  the  efforts  of  the  Allies  to  catch  the 
invaders  of  West  Flanders  between  simultaneous  attacks  from 
the  North,  to  be  made  by  Clerfayt  from  Tielt,  and  from  the 
East,  to  be  made  by  the  main  army,  miscarried.  After  heavy 
fighting  round  Turcoing  on  May  17th  and  1 8th,  of  which  the 
brunt  fell  on  the  British  columns  under  Abercromby  and  the 
Duke  of  York,  the  Allies  fell  back  behind  the  Scheldt;  and 
though  Pich^gru’s  counter-attack  (May  22nd)  was  repulsed,  he 
was  able  to  besiege  and  take  Ypres  (June  1st  to  17th)  and  then 
to  lay  siege  to  Ostend  and  Nieuport,  taking  post  on  the  left 
of  the  Scheldt  to  cover  the  operation.  But  the  Allies  were  in 
no  condition  to  interfere.  Clerfayt  had  fallen  back  to  Ghent, 
and  the  successful  advance  of  Jourdan  now  compelled  Saxe- 
Coburg  to  turn  Eastward.  Jourdan  had  brought  up  50,000 
men  from  the  Moselle  to  reinforce  the  Army  of  the  Ardennes, 
till  then  held  in  check  behind  the  Sambre  and  unable  to  cross, 
had  forced  the  passage  of  the  river  and  laid  siege  to  Charleroi 
(June  1 8th),  Beaulieu  recoiling  on  Namur.  Too  late  to  save 
Charleroi,  which  fell  on  June  25th,  Coburg  could  not  withdraw 
without  a  battle,  and  Jourdan’s  hard -won  victory  at  Fleurus 
(June  26th)  decided  the  fate  of  the  Netherlands.  The  Allies 
retired,  the  Duke  of  York  to  Malines,  the  Austrians  to  Louvain. 
Ostend,  Mons,  Tournay,  Ghent  and  Brussels  fell  into  the  hands 
of  the  French.  The  Army  of  the  North  joined  hands  with 
Jourdan’s  of  the  Sambre  and  Meuse,  and  before  their  joint 
advance  the  British,  Dutch  and  Hanoverians  fell  back  to  Breda 
to  cover  Holland  ;  the  Austrians  retired  by  Tirlemont  and 


390  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1794 


Liege  across  the  Meuse,  leaving  the  remaining  fortresses  of 
the  Netherlands  to  make  what  resistance  they  could.  By 
September  nearly  all  were  in  French  hands. 

The  timely  reinforcement  which  Jourdan  had  brought  up 
from  the  Moselle  to  decide  the  campaign  in  the  Netherlands, 
had  been  allowed  to  leave  its  original  station  by  the  inactivity 
of  the  Prussians  on  the  Middle  Rhine.1  Prussia  had  accepted 
a  heavy  subsidy  from  England,  in  return  for  which  she  had 
pledged  herself  to  place  troops  at  the  disposal  of  England  to 
aid  in  the  defence  of  the  Netherlands.  But  far  from  actively 
sharing  in  this  task,  Prussia  failed  also  to  contribute  to  it  by 
means  of  a  diversion  elsewhere.  Saxe-Teschen  had  crossed 
near  Mannheim  during  May  and  driven  Michaud  behind  the 
Queich ;  but  unsupported  the  Austrian  commander  could  get  no 
farther,  and  in  July  the  French  resumed  the  offensive,  drove 
Mollendorfs  Prussians  from  Kaiserslautern  (July  15th),  and 
forced  Saxe-Teschen  to  recross  the  Rhine.  In  September, 
Jourdan,  following  up  his  success  at  Fleurus,  turned  Eastward 
to  the  Meuse.  His  right  under  Scherer  secured  Namur,  and 
driving  Clerfayt’s  60,000  men  before  it,  won  a  great  victory  near 
Jtilich  (Oct.  2nd).  Kleber  then  besieged  Maastricht,  which  fell 
on  November  4th;  while  Jourdan  moving  Southward,  cleared 
the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine  of  the  Austrians,  capturing  Cologne, 
Andernach  and  Coblence.  At  this  point  he  got  into  touch 
with  the  Army  of  the  Moselle,  which  had  taken  Treves  on 
October  8th,  and  Mayence  was  again  besieged.  Meanwhile 
the  Armies  of  the  Alps  and  of  the  Pyrenees  had  been  winning 
successes  in  their  turn.  The  “  natural  boundaries  ”  had  been 
reached  on  all  sides ;  and  if  the  English  had  defeated  the 
Brest  Fleet  on  June  1st,  they  had  been  driven  from  Toulon  and 
had  not  done  anything  for  La  Vendee. 

But  the  most  conspicuous  of  the  successes  of  the  French  was 
yet  to  come.  The  position  of  the  English  and  their  auxiliaries 
on  the  Waal  was  seriously  threatened  by  the  disaffection  of 
a  very  large  section  of  the  Dutch.  There  had  always  been 
a  Francophil  party  in  Holland,  and  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety  was  counting  on  this  when  they  rejected  all  the  efforts 
of  the  Stadtholder  to  arrange  a  peace  and  sent  orders  to  their 
generals  to  push  on  with  the  conquest  of  Holland,  even  in  the 
depth  of  a  most  severe  winter.  Helped  by  the  memorable 

1  Cf.  Dropmore  MSS.  ii.  p.  5 77. 


THE  FIRST  COALITION 


391 


1795] 

frost  which  had  frozen  all  the  wonted  water  defences  of  the 
United  Provinces,  Pichegru  set  his  forces  in  motion  towards  the 
end  of  December.  The  British  and  Hanoverians  fought  well, 
but  the  numbers  of  the  French  and  the  lukewarmness  of  the 
Dutch  were  too  much  for  them,  and  the  Hanoverian  Count 
Wallmoden,  who  was  in  command,  after  repulsing  one  French 
attack  on  the  line  of  the  Lech,  had  to  withdraw  his  right  to 
Amersfoort,  and  thus  to  expose  Utrecht  and  Amsterdam  to  the 
French  (Jan.  14th).  In  fearful  weather  the  British  retired 
Eastward  upon  Bremen,  the  Hanoverians  and  Hessians  home¬ 
ward,  while  the  dramatic  capture  of  the  frozen  fleet  in  the 
Texel  by  a  handful  of  cavalry  under  Moreau  put  the  final 
touch  to  the  conquest  of  Holland.  The  foundation  of  the 
Batavian  Republic  and  a  treaty  with  France  which  placed  the 
Dutch  navy  at  the  service  of  its  new  ally  marked  the  beginning 
of  the  end  of  the  Coalition. 

For,  indeed,  the  Coalition  was  fast  perishing,  not  merely  by 
reason  of  the  French  successes,  but  of  its  own  divisions.  1795 
saw  Spain,  Tuscany  and  other  non-German  states  withdraw 
from  its  ranks  ;  and  the  more  important  defection,  that  of  Prussia, 
was  no  more  than  might  have  been  expected.  Even  without 
Poland  to  distract  the  attention  of  Prussia,  the  standing  jealousy 
between  the  Plohenzollern  and  the  Plapsburgs  would  probably 
have  prevented  anything  like  a  sincere  co-operation  ;  and  all 
along  there  had  been  at  the  Court  of  Berlin  a  party  which 
advocated  making  friends  with  the  Mammon  of  militant 
democracy  in  the  hopes  of  thereby  obtaining  advantages 
greater  than  those  to  be  gained  by  opposing  it.  Once  the 
monarchical  crusade  against  the  Revolution  and  its  subversive 
principles  had  failed,  once  it  became  clear  that  France  must  be 
beaten  before  she  could  be  partitioned,  this  party  had  steadily 
grown  in  influence.  France,  too,  was  ready  for  peace.  With 
the  repulse  of  the  invasion  and  the  complete  success  of  the 
French  arms  the  need  for  an  internal  government  as  violent 
and  repressive  as  that  of  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety  had 
ceased.  A  reaction  against  the  excesses  of  the  Terror  had  set 
in,  and  the  “  revolution  of  Thermidor  ”  had  placed  in  power  men 
of  moderate  views  who  had  no  wish  to  remain  at  war  with  all 
Europe.1  Even  those  among  them  who,  like  Rewbell,  wished 
to  continue  the  war  against  the  “  hereditary  enemies,”  Austria 
1  Cf.  speech  of  Merlin  of  Douai  to  the  Convention,  Dec.  4th,  1794* 


392  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1795 


and  England,  were  fully  awake  to  the  advantage  of  detaching 
Prussia  and  the  rest  of  the  Coalition  from  the  side  of  their 
enemies.  In  January  1795  negotiations  were  begun  at  Basel 
in  which  Barthelemy  represented  France,  and  von  Goltz  and, 
after  his  death  (Feb.  6th),  Hardenberg  acted  for  Prussia.  France 
demanded  the  recognition  of  the  Republic  and  of  the  Rhine 
frontier  as  the  boundary  of  France.  This  involved  the  sur¬ 
render  by  Prussia  of  her  territory  West  of  the  Rhine,  Cleves, 
Upper  Guelders  and  Mors.  These,  however,  Prussia  was 
ready  to  give  up  in  return  for  the  recognition  by  France  of  the 
neutrality  of  Germany  North  of  the  Main,  and  the  promise  that 
at  the  conclusion  of  a  general  peace  Prussia  should  be  com¬ 
pensated  for  her  losses.  On  these  terms  a  peace  was  before 
long  arranged,  and  on  April  5th,  1795,  it  was  signed  by  the 
plenipotentiaries  of  the  two  Powers.  The  arrangements  about 
compensation  were  embodied  in  secret  articles,  which  also 
translated  the  promise  of  the  formal  treaty  that  France  would 
accept  the  good  offices  of  the  King  of  Prussia  in  favour  of 
those  German  states  which  should  claim  his  protection  into  a 
definite  recognition  of  their  neutrality  under  a  Prussian  guar¬ 
antee.  It  was  further  arranged  that  should  Hanover  refuse 
to  accept  this  neutrality,  Prussian  troops  should  occupy  the 
Electorate;  but  Hanover  so  far  disassociated  herself  from  the 
action  of  Great  Britain  as  to  acquiesce  in  the  arrangement, 
and  not  till  1801  did  the  Prussians  take  possession  of  the 
country.1 

Few  actions  have  been  more  criticised  than  that  of  Prussia 
in  making  peace  with  France  in  1795.  In  the  light  of  sub¬ 
sequent  events  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  path  on  which 
Prussia  thus  entered  was  to  lead  to  Jena  and  Auerstadt,  to 
the  humiliation  of  Tilsit,  and  the  degradations  of  1808-1812. 
It  is  easy  to  see  now  that  England  and  Austria  can  plead 
an  ample  justification  for  their  refusal  to  make  peace  in  1795  ; 
that  the  professions  of  pacific  intentions  with  which  the  new 
system  in  France  was  inaugurated  were  belied  by  the  continued 
instability  of  the  French  Government  at  home  and  by  the 
disregard  of  treaties  and  of  international  obligations  which 
the  Directory  no  less  than  the  Convention  exhibited  in  dealing 
with  other  nations ;  that  the  final  outcome  of  the  recurrent 
constitutional  crises  in  France  was  the  establishment  of  the 

1  Cf.  Chapter  XXXV. 


1795] 


THE  FIRST  COALITION 


393 


most  formidable  military  despotism  the  world  has  yet  seen. 
But  it  may  be  urged  that  the  pacific  intentions  of  France  were 
never  given  a  fair  chance;  that  the  continuation  of  the  war 
involved  financial  and  domestic  troubles  which  made  a  military 
despotism  inevitable ;  that  peace  would  have  freed  the  Directory 
from  the  difficulties  which  finally  overthrew  it  ;  that  it  was  the 
Italian  campaign  of  1796  which  gave  Bonaparte  his  first  real 
start  on  the  road  to  supreme  power;  that  without  the  Italian 
campaign  of  1796  he  would  never  have  had  a  chance,  and  that 
if  England  and  Austria  had  followed  Prussia’s  example  and 
made  peace  in  1795  no  campaign  would  have  been  fought  in 
Italy  in  1796.  Between  these  two  views  it  is  not  easy  to 
adjust  the  balance  of  probabilities.  For  each  there  is  much  to 
be  said.  It  is  clear  that  Pitt  at  least  was  anxious  to  grasp  the 
opportunity  offered  by  the  establishment  of  the  Directory,  and 
to  test  the  sincerity  of  their  pacific  professions  by  opening 
negotiations.1  But  his  overtures  fell  on  unfruitful  soil,  and 
rather  encouraged  the  bellicose  element  in  the  Directory.  The 
fatal  thing  was  Prussia’s  isolated  action.  If  she  was  right  to 
make  peace,  she  was  not  right  to  make  peace  alone.  England 
and  Austria  may  have  let  the  best  chance  slip  early  in  1795 
when  the  tone  of  the  French  was  fairly  moderate,  but  Prussia’s 
desertion  was  an  important  factor  in  raising  the  demands  of 
the  Directory,  which,  when  Pitt  made  his  overtures,  had  reached 
a  point  far  beyond  that  to  which  either  England  or  the  Emperor 
was  prepared  to  go.  Perhaps  one  may  say  that  Prussia’s  action 
was  stultified  by  the  line  adopted  by  England  and  Austria, 
but  that  the  course  of  events  fully  bore  out  their  expectations. 
After  all,  the  question  whether,  if  a  general  peace  had  been 
made  in  1795  the  Directory  could  or  could  not  have  provided 
France  with  a  stable  government  capable  of  living  in  harmony 
with  its  neighbours,  concerns  French  rather  than  German 
history.  It  must,  moreover,  be  admitted  that  Prussia  made 
the  Peace  of  Basel  not  so  much  from  a  desire  to  restore  peace 
to  Europe,  or  even  to  Germany,  as  from  more  selfish  motives. 
The  establishment  of  a  line  of  demarcation,2  behind  which  the 
North  German  states  were  to  enjoy  neutrality,  was  again 

1  Cf.  “France  and  the  First  Coalition  before  the  Campaign  of  1796”:  J.  H. 
Rose  in  E.  H.  A\ ,  April  1903. 

2  The  line  of  demarcation  ran  up  the  Ems  to  Munster,  thence  by  Coesfeld  and 
Borken  to  the  Duchy  of  Cleves.  It  then  followed  the  Rhine  as  far  as  Duisburg,  and 


CHAPTER  XX 


FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 

THE  ineffective  part  played  by  Prussia  in  resisting  the  tide 
of  French  conquest  can  be  partially  explained,  though 
the  explanation  is  no  exculpation,  by  the  fact  that  her  heart  was 
never  in  the  task.  As  in  1793,  so  in  1794  the  Vistula  rather 
than  the  Rhine  was  the  point  upon  which  Prussia’s  hopes 
and  interest  were  concentrated.  The  Second  Partition  had 
not  put  an  end  to  the  troubles  of  Poland  :  it  had  roused  up  an 
intense  feeling  against  Prussia,  whose  conduct  in  allying  with 
Poland  in  1790  and  then  not  only  abandoning  her  in  1792,  but 
actually  joining  Russia  to  despoil  her  former  ally,  was  looked 
upon  by  the  Poles  as  the  basest  treachery,  while  even  Russia’s 
own  partisans  seem  to  have  been  surprised  at  the  Czarina’s 
cynical  rapacity.  Some  of  the  authors  of  the  Constitution  of 
1791  had  fled  to  Saxony,  and  from  that  refuge  had  begun  a 
nationalist  agitation.  This  spread  rapidly  over  Poland  and 
in  March  1794  culminated  in  the  outbreak  of  an  insurrection  at 
Cracow.  Though  disavowed  by  the  King  the  rebels  were  at 
first  successful.  Their  gallant  leader  Kosciuzsko  routed  a 
Russian  force  at  Raclawice  (April  4th),  and  aided  by  the 
inhabitants  expelled  the  Russian  garrison  from  Warsaw 
(April  17th).  But  his  successes  were  not  to  be  long-lived. 
Russia  put  a  large  force  into  the  field  and  retook  Vilna 
(Aug.  22nd).  Thugut  had  no  intention  of  letting  Austria  be 
again  left  out  of  the  distribution  of  spoils  which  was  sure  to 
follow  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion  ;  he  was,  moreover,  anxious 
to  renew  good  relations  with  Catherine.  Austria  therefore 
declared  against  the  Poles  and  occupied  Polish  Galicia,  and  in 
July  50,000  Russians  advanced  to  Warsaw  and  laid  siege  to  the 
town.  An  insurrection  in  the  provinces  acquired  by  Prussia  in 
17 93  forced  Frederick  William  to  raise  the  siege  (Sept.  6th) ; 
but  Suvorov,  the  best  Russian  general  of  the  day,  advanced 
steadily  West,  defeating  the  Poles  in  several  encounters,  of 

which  that  at  Macejowice  (Oct.  10th)  was  the  most  important, 

396 


FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 


397 


1 795] 

and  stormed  the  Praga  suburb  of  Warsaw  on  Nov.  4th.  With 
the  fall  of  Warsaw  five  days  later  the  independence  of  Poland 
passed  away.  The  jealousies  and  intrigues  of  the  three  partners 
in  the  overthrow  of  the  Republic  protracted  the  negotiations 
over  the  Partition  for  nearly  a  year.  Russia,  which  had  done 
the  lion’s  share  of  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion,  held  the 
best  cards  and  was  disposed  to  favour  Austria  rather  than 
Prussia,  so  as  to  preserve  the  balance  between  them.  Once 
the  terms  arranged  between  Catherine  and  Thugut  (Jan.  1795) 
had  been  at  a  favourable  moment  (Aug.  9th)  communicated  to 
Prussia  the  end  was  not  far  off.  Unsatisfactory  as  the  division 
was  to  him,  Frederick  William  could  not  oppose  Russia’s  deci¬ 
sion,  and  on  October  25th  the  treaties  were  signed  which 
divided  the  unhappy  country  among  its  covetous  neighbours. 
Warsaw  and  the  greater  part  of  the  Palatinate  of  Cracow  fell 
to  the  share  of  Prussia,  Cracow  itself,  Lublin,  Sandomir  and 
part  of  Masovia  to  Austria,  the  remainder  to  Russia.  In  extent 
the  territories  which  Prussia  and  Austria  thus  acquired  exceeded 
those  they  were  losing  to  France  beyond  the  Rhine,  and  geogra¬ 
phically  the  new  provinces  were  more  advantageously  situated 
than  were  those  for  which  they  were  in  some  measure  a  com¬ 
pensation  ;  but  Prussia  had  already  as  large  a  Slavonic  element 
in  her  population  as  she  desired,  and  even  the  Belgians  had 
more  in  common  with  the  Austrians  than  Poles  had.  Though 
the  anarchy,  the  selfishness  and  the  want  of  patriotism  which 
had  made  the  Polish  Republic  a  byword  may  be  said  to  have 
to  some  extent  justified  the  treatment  Poland  received,  it  is  not 
unsatisfactory  to  reflect  that  the  Partition  profited  its  authors 
very  little.  The  real  gainer  by  the  Polish  troubles  was  the 
French  Republic,  which  owed  its  great  successes  on  the  Meuse 
and  Rhine  in  no  small  measure  to  the  preoccupation  of  Austria 
and  Prussia  in  playing  jackal  to  Russia’s  lion  in  Poland. 

Meanwhile  hostilities  were  about  to  be  resumed  on  the  Rhine. 
Here,  as  was  only  natural,  Prussia’s  defection  had  been  the 
signal  for  a  storm  of  abuse  and  bitter  recrimination.  But  it 
was  a  little  absurd  for  states,  most  of  which  had  not  made  any 
conspicuous  efforts  in  their  own  defence  or  in  the  defence  of 
their  neighbours,  to  talk  of  Prussia’s  “  treachery,”  “  breach  of 
oaths  and  obligation,”  to  make  the  belated  discovery  that 
Germany  was  one  state  with  one  head,  not  a  federation  of 
independent  Powers.  The  hollowness  of  the  outcry  was  shown 


398  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1795 


by  the  action  of  the  individual  members  of  the  Empire.  The 
states  whose  territories  were  covered  by  the  proposed  line  of 
demarcation  readily  grasped  the  chance  of  being  left  undis¬ 
turbed  ;  with  the  fortunes  of  the  rest  of  the  Empire  they  did  not 
concern  themselves.  To  Prussia’s  credit  it  must  be  admitted 
that  she  did  not  at  once  give  up  all  hopes  of  expanding  the 
Peace  of  Basel  into  a  general  peace.  To  facilitate  this  she 
sought  to  induce  France  to  modify  her  terms  and  to  give  up 
the  demand  for  the  left  bank.  But  of  doing  this  France  had 
not  the  least  intention ;  all  she  would  concede  was  that  it 
should  be  open  to  any  member  of  the  Empire  to  accede  to  the 
Peace  of  Basel  within  the  next  three  months. 

When  the  Prussian  envoy  communicated  this  offer  to  the 
Diet  (April),  the  Emperor  replied  by  an  appeal  to  the  states 
to  keep  together  and  not  play  into  the  hands  of  France  by 
acting  singly.  He  proceeded  to  show  the  line  he  intended  to 
adopt  by  concluding  a  fresh  treaty  with  England  (May  4th),  by 
which  he  undertook  in  return  for  a  loan  of  ^4, 600, 000  to  put 
into  the  field  a  force  of  200,000  men.  At  the  same  time,  he 
was  in  full  agreement  with  the  decree  of  July  3rd,  which 
announced  the  anxiety  of  the  Diet  to  conclude  a  joint  and 
general  peace  according  to  the  constitution  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire  and  preserving  its  full  territorial  integrity.  Indeed, 
the  Emperor  went  so  far  as  to  empower  Denmark  to  make 
peace  proposals  to  France  on  behalf  of  the  Empire.  These 
were  duly  made,  but  they  did  not  prevent  the  resumption  of 
hostilities  and  about  the  end  of  October  the  proposals  were 
definitely  rejected  by  France. 

After  the  conquest  of  Holland  and  the  expulsion  of  the 
Allied  field  forces  from  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine,  military 
operations  had  languished,  being  indeed  quite  subordinated 
to  diplomatic  requirements.  Moreover,  even  the  victorious 
French  needed  time  to  reorganise  and  refit,  and  so  throughout 
the  greater  part  of  1795  they  contented  themselves  with  the 
sieges  of  the  few  places  on  the  left  bank,  such  as  Mayence  and 
Luxembourg,  which  still  resisted  their  attacks. 

For  the  defence  of  the  right  bank  a  considerable  army  had 
been  got  together  under  the  command  of  Clerfayt ; 1  but  he 
made  no  effort  to  relieve  Luxembourg,  as  Thugut  had  come  to 
regard  Belgium  as  definitely  lost  and  hoped  to  gain  more  from 

1  250  squadrons  and  137  battalions. 


1795]  FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 


399 


the  plots  for  a  Royalist  counter-revolution  in  France,  which 
were  at  this  time  on  foot.  In  these  Pichegru,  the  commander 
of  the  Army  of  the  Rhine  and  Moselle,  was  to  some  extent 
implicated.  His  army,  some  90,000  strong,  lined  the  Upper 
Rhine  from  Huningen  to  Mayence;  and  according  to  Carnot’s 
plan  of  campaign  it  was  to  co-operate  with  Jourdan  and  the 
85,000  men  of  the  Sambre  and  Meuse  Army,  who  were  on  the 
Middle  Rhine,  stretching  from  Coblence  to  Cleves.  Set  free  to 
resume  the  offensive  by  the  fall  (June  25th)  of  Luxembourg, 
Jourdan  put  his  troops  in  motion  in  September,  crossed  the 
Rhine  at  Neuss  and  Diisseldorf,  and  by  the  simple  expedient 
of  violating  the  neutrality  of  the  “  line  of  demarcation,” 
outflanked  Clerfayt’s  right,  thus  forcing  the  Austrians  to 
abandon  the  lines  of  the  Sieg  and  the  Lahn  and  to  retire 
behind  the  Main.  Meanwhile  Mannheim  had  surrendered  to 
Pichegru  at  the  mere  threat  of  a  bombardment  (Sept.  20th), 
and  that  general’s  forces  were  pushing  across  the  Palatinate 
towards  Heidelberg,  driving  before  them  Wiirmser,  who  com¬ 
manded  the  left  wing  of  the  Austrian  army.  The  surrender 
of  Mannheim,  like  that  of  Diisseldorf  a  few  days  earlier,  was 
attributed  by  the  Austrians  to  treachery  on  the  part  of  the 
Elector  Palatine.  Charles  Theodore  was  on  the  point  of 
coming  to  terms  with  France,  and  the  charge  seems  to  have 
had  some  foundation.  Indeed,  the  attitude  of  Germany  as  a 
whole  was  hardly  creditable.  The  appearance  of  the  French 
on  the  right  bank  and  the  extension  to  it  of  both  the  official 
requisitions  and  the  even  more  exacting  unofficial  plundering, 
which  had  swept  the  left  bank  all  but  bare,  were  quite  enough 
to  check  any  democratic  sympathies.  However,  instead  of 
uniting  in  a  determined  effort  to  repulse  the  invader,  the  Princes 
of  Western  Germany  sought  security  in  separate  understandings 
with  the  enemy.  Hanover  and  the  North  German  Princes  as  a 
whole  gladly  availed  themselves  of  the  shelter  of  the  “  line 
of  demarcation.”  The  Saxon  contingent  in  the  Army  of  the 
Empire  was  recalled  “  to  defend  Saxony  against  the  dangers 
which  threaten  it.”  Hesse-Cassel  had  already  made  peace  with 
France  (Aug.  29th);  Wiirtemberg  followed  suit  in  September. 

But  Clerfayt  was  soon  able  to  put  a  different  complexion 
upon  affairs.  Deceiving  Jourdan  into  a  belief  that  he  was 
going  to  respect  the  neutral  line  which  Jourdan  himself  had 
disregarded,  the  Austrian  commander  suddenly  crossed  the 


400  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1796 


Main  above  Frankfurt  (Oct.  nth),  and  moving  upon  Bergen 
rolled  up  the  French  line  from  its  left.  The  Army  of  the 
Sambre  and  Meuse  went  completely  to  pieces  and  fell  back 
to  the  left  bank  in  great  confusion,  the  peasantry  whom  its 
ravages  and  plundering  had  provoked  retaliating  in  kind  on 
its  stragglers  and  sick.  Clerfayt  then  turned  his  steps  to  Mayence, 
which  had  been  for  some  time  closely  beset,  and  was  hemmed 
into  the  Westward  by  strong  lines  of  circumvallation.  Against 
these  he  delivered,  early  in  the  morning  of  October  29th,  a  well- 
planned  and  well-conducted  sortie.  Their  centre  pierced  and 
their  left  turned,  the  French  had  to  fall  back  behind  the  Pfriem, 
to  cover  the  line  from  Worms  to  Donnersberg.  On  the  same 
day  Wiirmser,  who  had  checked  on  September  24th  the  French 
advance  on  Heidelberg  at  Neuenheim,  stormed  Pichegru’s  posi¬ 
tion  on  the  Galgenberg  outside  Mannheim.  These  successes 
allowed  Clerfayt  to  interpose  between  the  Army  of  the  Rhine 
and  Moselle  and  that  of  the  Sambre  and  Meuse.  The  former 
was  driven  back  behind  the  Queich,  and  then  Wiirmser  was  left 
to  keep  Pichegru  in  check,  while  Clerfayt,  turning  Northward, 
frustrated  Jourdan’s  efforts  to  come  to  his  colleague’s  help, 
and  forced  him  back  to  the  Moselle.  Mannheim  was  retaken 
on  November  22nd,1  and  on  December  21st  an  armistice  was 
concluded  with  Pichegru  which  brought  hostilities  to  a  close. 

Thus  the  campaign  in  Germany  ended  somewhat  more 
favourably  for  Austria  than  had  any  since  the  war  began.  This 
was  mainly  due  to  the  failure  of  Pichegru  to  co-operate  properly 
with  Jourdan ;  but  though  Clerfayt’s  critics  declared  that  a  man 
of  more  resolution  and  decision  would  have  achieved  even 
greater  victories,2  his  generalship  had  had  a  good  deal  to  do 
with  the  successful  issue  of  the  campaign,  and  it  was  a  bad 
thing  for  Austria  that  Thugut’s  omnipotence  required  the 
general’s  dismissal  before  the  next  campaign.  The  all- 
powerful  minister  could  not  brook  any  independence  or  any 
opposition  on  the  part  of  the  generals,  much  less  the  outspoken 
and  well-grounded  criticism  which  Clerfayt  had  bestowed  upon 
the  indifferent  military  administration  and  on  the  general 

1  Oberndorf,  the  officer  responsible  for  the  capitulation  of  September  20th,  and 
Salabert,  the  minister  of  Zweibriicken,  were  by  Thugut’s  orders  arrested  on  a  charge 
of  treason  and  kept  in  prison.  This  “  outrage  ”  on  the  subjects  of  a  member  of  the 
Electoral  College  was  much  resented  in  the  Empire,  and  even  the  Hapsburg  Elector 
of  Cologne  joined  in  the  outcry  against  the  action  of  Austria. 

2  Cf.  Dropmore  MSS.  iv.  p.  7. 


1795]  FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 


401 


policy  of  the  minister.  Moreover,  Clerfayt  was  on  bad  terms 
with  Wtirmser,  who  was  in  high  favour  at  Court,  and  despite 
his  victories  he  was  removed  from  the  command.1  It  was  an 
unfortunate  step  ;  for  although  his  successor,  the  Archduke 
Charles,  was  a  man  of  not  less  capacity,  his  supersession  was  a 
victory  for  the  little  “War  Office  ring,”  which  under  the  general 
direction  of  Thugut  endeavoured  with  the  most  scanty  success 
to  conduct  campaigns  from  Vienna. 

During  this  period  negotiations  had  still  been  going  on,  but 
all  efforts  to  arrange  a  general  peace  proved  futile.  Neither 
the  Emperor  nor  the  Directory  would  give  way,  and  the 
negotiations  of  Russia  with  France  were  as  far  as  ever  from 
bringing  about  any  definite  result.  Hardenberg  was  already 
beginning  to  feel  uneasy.  He  saw  the  dangers  to  Prussia 
involved  in  continued  French  successes,  and  he  went  as  far  as 
to  point  out  to  his  King  that  the  justification  of  the  Peace  of 
Basel  would  be  removed  if  it  failed  to  serve  as  the  basis  for  a 
general  peace  ;  but  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  Prussia 
would  sacrifice  the  immediate  benefits  of  neutrality  for  a  rather 
remote  general  interest,  and  so,  despite  the  misgivings  her  line 
of  action  excited  in  the  minds  of  some  of  her  more  clear-sighted 
ministers,  Prussia  adhered  to  the  path  she  had  chosen  at  Basel. 

For  the  campaign  of  1796  the  Directory  proposed  a  three¬ 
fold  attack  upon  the  hereditary  dominions  of  Austria:  Jourdan 
with  the  refitted  Army  of  the  Sambre  and  Meuse  was  to 
advance  by  the  Main  ;  Moreau,  who  had  succeeded  to  Pich^gru’s 
command,  was  to  push  down  the  Danube ;  while  their  joint 
operations  were  to  be  assisted  by  those  of  the  Army  of  Italy 
under  an  officer  who  had  yet  to  win  his  spurs  in  independent 
command,  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  In  the  original  plan  the 
Italian  campaign,  though  important,  was  really  secondary  to 
the  far  less  famous  operations  on  the  Rhine.  Only  50,000  men 
were  allotted  to  it,  as  against  Jourdan’s  76,000  and  Moreau’s 
80,000 ;  but  the  genius  of  the  young  commander  of  the  Army 
of  Italy  altered  their  relative  importance.  Massena’s  victory 
at  Loano  in  the  previous  autumn  had  been  too  late  in  the  year 
(Nov.  24th)  to  be  followed  up  at  once,  but  it  had  cut  off  the 
Austro-Sardinians  from  the  sea,  and  had  opened  the  way  for 
the  brilliant  operations  by  which  Bonaparte,  breaking  through 
the  centre  of  the  Austro-Sardinian  positions  along  the  Apen- 

1  Cf.  Ilaiisser,  ii.  p.  45. 


26 


402  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1796 


nines,  thrust  Beaulieu’s  Austrians  back  upon  Milan,  and  forced 
the  Sardinians,  thus  separated  from  their  allies,  to  make  peace 
at  Cherasco  on  the  terms  he  dictated  (April  28th).  Thus  freed 
from  the  Sardinians,  Bonaparte  pushed  on  Eastward,  drove  the 
Austrians  out  of  the  Milanese,  compelled  Beaulieu  to  take 
refuge  in  Tyrol,  and  laid  siege  to  Mantua,  the  last  bulwark 
of  Austrian  rule  in  Italy.  Even  before  the  campaign  on  the 
Rhine  opened  25,000  men  had  had  to  be  detached  from  the 
Southern  wing  of  the  Austrian  army  in  Germany  to  attempt 
to  check  his  victorious  progress. 

This  left  the  Archduke  Charles  with  some  140,000  men 
to  oppose  to  the  combined  advance  of  Jourdan  and  Moreau. 
This  total  included  the  garrisons  of  Mayence,  Ehrenbreitstein 
and  other  fortresses,  and  the  relics  of  YVurmser’s  wing,  now 
under  Latour,  an  officer  hardly  fit  for  an  independent  command, 
but  more  suited  to  his  subordinate  position  than  a  self-asserting 
colleague  like  Wiirmser.  At  the  beginning  of  June,  Kleber 
at  the  head  of  Jourdan’s  left  wing  pushed  across  the  Rhine 
at  Diisseldorf  and,  supported  by  his  chief,  who  crossed  at 
Neuwied,  drove  the  Austrians  back  towards  the  Lahn.  At 
Wetzlar  the  Archduke,  who  had  come  up  with  reinforcements, 
barred  the  French  advance,  and  a  sharp  fight  (June  14th)  saw 
the  French  compelled  to  retire  by  the  turning  of  their  left. 
Kray  pursued  Kleber  closely  and  suffered  some  loss  in  an  action 
with  his  rearguard  at  Altenkirchen  (June  19th);  but  Jourdan 
had  to  recross  the  Rhine  (June  21st),  and  for  the  time  Franconia 
was  cleared. 

But  Jourdan  had  occupied  the  Archduke’s  attention,  and 
so  allowed  Moreau  to  utilise  the  chance  given  him  by  Wtirmser’s 
defective  dispositions,  which  the  Archduke  had  had  no  time 
to  alter.  A  feint  on  Mannheim  (June  20th)  drew  Latour  off 
to  his  right,  thereby  enabling  Moreau  to  force  a  passage  at 
Kehl,  weakly  defended  by  7000  Swabians  (June  24th).  This 
severed  the  10,000  men  in  the  Breisgau  from  Latour’s  centre 
and  right,  which  took  post  behind  the  Murg.  The  news  of 
Moreau’s  passage  of  the  Rhine  brought  the  Archduke  South 
again.  He  left  Wartensleben  with  some  40,000  men  to 
“contain”  Jourdan,  and  hurried  up  to  the  Murg,  only  to  be 
attacked  by  Moreau  near  Malsch  (July  10th)  and  beaten  in 
a  well-contested  action.  He  fell  back  to  Pforzheim  and  thence 
behind  the  Neckar  to  Cannstadt,  thus  leaving  the  road  into 


1796]  FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 


403 


Swabia  by  Stuttgart  open  to  Moreau.  On  July  22nd  the 
French  attacked  his  positions  behind  the  Neckar,  but  their 
assaults  were  repulsed.  However,  the  news  that  Wartensleben 
was  retreating  before  Jourdan  and  had  left  Wurzburg  on  the 
22nd,  decided  the  Archduke  to  retire  towards  the  Danube, 
where  he  took  up  a  position,  its  left  resting  on  the  river  near 
Gunzburg,  while  the  right  extended  through  Neresheim  to 
Nordlingen.  Here  he  remained  halted  some  days,  holding 
Moreau  in  check  and  recovering  touch  with  the  division  from 
the  Breisgau  which  was  retreating  down  the  right  bank  of  the 
Danube.  Flis  chief  concern  was  to  retain  touch  with  Warten¬ 
sleben  and  by  keeping  the  interior  position  between  the  two 
French  armies  to  be  able  at  the  right  moment  to  concentrate 
all  his  forces  against  whichever  of  the  opposing  armies  he  could 
attack  with  most  prospect  of  success. 

No  better  example  can  be  found  of  the  way  in  which 
particularism  and  selfish  local  feelings  dominated  Germany,  to 
the  exclusion  of  the  national  idea  and  of  all  sense  of  community 
of  interest,  than  the  conduct  of  the  minor  Powers  at  this  time. 
The  outrages,  exactions  and  excesses  of  the  French  armies 
were  enough  to  have  stung  the  most  slack  and  selfish  into 
activity  and  to  have  roused  the  fiercest  opposition ;  but,  as  in 
1794  and  1795,  the  states  which  found  themselves  threatened 
by  the  advance  of  Jourdan  and  Moreau  hastened  to  make  the 
best  terms  they  could  with  the  invader,  each  for  itself,  without 
ever  realising  that  the  only  protection  or  security  worth  having 
was  that  which  was  not  to  be  obtained  except  by  showing  the 
enemy  that  they  were  capable  of  defending  themselves  and 
each  other.  Localism  was  no  less  strong  in  Spain,  while  the 
excesses  of  the  Armies  of  the  Sambre  and  Meuse  and  of  the 
Rhine  and  Moselle  were  hardly  surpassed  by  the  Napoleonic 
armies  in  the  Peninsula ;  but  in  Spain  the  separate  provinces 
never  attempted  to  gain  their  own  security  by  betraying  the 
others,  and  though,  if  unaided  by  regular  forces,  the  guerilla 
bands  would  have  failed  to  expel  the  invaders,  the  Spanish 
peasantry  did  retaliate  very  effectively  upon  the  plunderers  of 
Cordova  and  the  stormers  of  Saragossa.  But  as  the  French 
armies  approached  their  territories  in  1796  the  minor  Princes 
of  Germany  sought  safety  in  tame  surrenders  and  in  the  security 
of  a  promised  “  protection.”  The  Swabian  Circle  set  the 
example  of  negotiating  with  Moreau,  and  withdrew  its  troops 


404  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1796 


from  the  Archduke’s  army;  Wiirtemberg  did  the  same,  con¬ 
cluding  an  armistice  in  July  and  converting  it  into  a  definite 
peace  a  month  later  (Aug.  15th);  and  Baden  concluded  a 
treaty  on  practically  the  same  terms  (Aug.  22nd).  Both 
Powers  abandoned  to  France  all  their  possessions  on  the  left 
bank ; 1  both  declared  themselves  ready  to  receive  ecclesiastical 
territory  as  a  “  compensation  ” ;  both  promised  not  to  lend  any 
help  to  any  Power  which  was  hostile  to  France.  The  Saxon 
contingent,  as  in  1795,  departed  homeward,  and  the  Elector 
concluded  a  convention  of  neutrality.  The  three  Ecclesiastical 
Electors  took  refuge  in  the  interior  of  Germany,  and  many  of 
the  minor  Princes  followed  the  example  their  flight  had  set. 
But  while  these  states  were  to  find  the  promised  protection 
a  very  shadowy  affair,  they  had  to  pay  both  in  money  and 
in  contributions  in  kind  sums  which  would  have  amply  sufficed 
to  defend  their  territories  against  the  French.  The  Franconian 
Circle  had  to  pay  6  million  francs  in  cash  and  to  provide 
goods  to  the  value  of  2  millions  more;  Baden  may  be  held 
to  have  got  off  lightly  with  2  millions  ;  while  the  Swabian 
ecclesiastical  territories  were  heavily  taxed  with  7  millions. 
About  the  same  time  the  negotiations  between  Prussia  and 
France  which  had  been  dragging  on  for  some  months  were 
brought  to  a  conclusion,  and  on  August  5th  a  new  treaty  was 
signed.  A  new  line  of  demarcation  was  arranged,  while  in  the 
secret  articles  all  pretence  about  the  “  integrity  of  the  Empire  ” 
was  abandoned,  and  the  principle  of  compensation  at  the  ex¬ 
pense  of  the  ecclesiastical  states  for  territorial  losses  on  the  left 
bank  was  accepted.  Among  other  proposed  changes  the  House 
of  Orange-Nassau  was  to  receive  Bamberg  and  Wurzburg  as  a  set¬ 
off  against  the  United  Provinces,  Prussia  thus  agreeing  that  Ger¬ 
many  should  provide  the  compensation  for  a  loss  of  non-German 
territory  ;  an  arrangement  which  may  be’explained  by  the  relation 
existing  between  the  families  of  Orange  and  Hohenzollern. 

Meanwhile  the  retrograde  movements  of  Wartensleben  and 
the  Archduke  had  brought  them  nearer  together.  With  less 
than  40,000  men  Wartensleben  had  no  chance  of  arresting 
the  advance  which  Jourdan  resumed  towards  the  end  of  June. 
He  was  driven  back  up  the  Main,  Frankfort,  Wurzburg  and 
Bamberg  falling  one  after  another  into  French  hands.  From 

1  These  included  Mompelgard,  Hericourt  and  Ostheim  belonging  to  Wiirtemberg ; 
Sponheim,  Herspring  and  Beinheim  belonging  to  Baden. 


1 796] 


FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 


405 


Bamberg,  which  he  evacuated  on  August  2nd,  Wartensleben 
fell  back  Eastward  by  Nuremberg  towards  Amberg  (Aug. 
1 2th),  fearing  to  expose  to  Jourdan  the  magazines  collected 
along  the  Bohemian  frontier  should  he  continue  his  movement 
Southward  to  join  the  Archduke.  This  step  might  have  been 
fatal,  as  it  gave  Jourdan  a  chance  of  interposing  between  the 
Archduke  and  Wartensleben  by  a  rapid  advance  to  the  Danube. 
But  Jourdan  was  a  little  slow  to  grasp  his  chance.  He  halted 
his  men  at  Nuremberg  from  August  13th  to  16th,  and  at  this 
crisis  the  Archduke  acted  with  a  decision  and  a  calculated 
daring  which  entitle  him  to  a  high  place  among  commanders. 
He  had  by  a  hard  fought  action  at  Neresheim  (Aug.  nth) 
secured  an  unmolested  retreat  to  Donauwerth,  and  now,  leaving 
Latour  with  a  comparatively  thin  screen  of  troops  to  hide  his 
movements  from  Moreau,  he  crossed  to  the  right  bank  of  the 
Danube  with  the  bulk  of  his  corps  (Aug.  1 5th),  marched  down¬ 
stream  to  Ingolstadt  and  recrossed  there  (Aug.  16th). 
Jourdan  had  resumed  his  advance  on  the  17th,  had  driven 
Wartensleben  back  before  him  to  the  river  Naab,  and  had  thrust 
a  division  under  Bernadotte  out  to  his  right  towards  Neumarkt. 
It  was  on  this  division,  less  than  10,000  strong,  that  the  Arch¬ 
duke  fell  with  three  times  as  many  men  on  August  22nd. 
Bernadotte  was  crushed,  and  his  defeat  parried  Jourdan’s  thrust 
at  the  Danube  and  forced  him  to  fall  back  to  Amberg.  Here 
on  August  24th  the  united  forces  of  the  Archduke  and  his 
lieutenant,  over  60,000  in  all,  attacked  Jourdan’s  40,000.  A 
fiercely-contested  battle  ended  in  the  disorderly  retreat  of  the 
Army  of  the  Sambre  and  Meuse  by  Nuremberg  to  the  Main. 
By  a  great  effort  Jourdan  so  far  rallied  his  men  as  to  stand 
at  Wurzburg  and  offer  battle  (Sept.  1st)  in  the  hope  that 
Moreau  might  help  him  ;  but  Moreau  was  before  the  gates  of 
Munich,  and  on  September  3rd  an  Austrian  attack  drove 
Jourdan  from  his  position.  His  situation  was  critical. 
Pursued  by  superior  forces,  with  the  peasantry  turning  out  to 
harass  his  retreat  and  cut  off  stragglers,  his  army  was  fast 
degenerating  into  a  rabble,  when  it  was  saved  from  destruction 
by  the  interposition  of  Marceau  and  a  force  drawn  from  the 
besiegers  of  Mayence  and  Ehrenbreitstein.  At  Altenkirchen 
(Sept.  20th),  Marceau  sacrificed  his  life,  but  he  secured  the  safe 
retreat  of  the  relics  of  Jourdan’s  broken  army  behind  the  shelter 
of  the  Rhine, 


4o6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1796 


This  set  the  Archduke  free  to  attend  to  the  Army  of  the 
Rhine  and  Moselle.  Moreau  had  crossed  the  Danube  at 
Dillingen  on  August  19th,  had  forced  the  passage  of  the  Lech 
five  days  later  despite  Latour’s  gallant  resistance,  and  had 
pushed  forward  into  Bavaria,  which  till  then  had  not  been 
touched  by  the  war.  The  presence  of  his  plundering  hordes 
completed  the  distaste  which  the  Bavarians  already  felt  for  the 
war.  Distrusting  Austria,  fearing  with  only  too  good  reason 
that  she  had  not  relinquished  her  designs  on  their  country,  the 
Bavarians  and  their  ruler  had  never  been  enthusiastic  for  the 
war,  and  now  that  they  found  themselves  experiencing  the 
horrors  of  a  French  invasion  they  at  once  began  negotiating. 
Still  the  Treaty  of  Pfaffenhofen  (Sept.  7th)  can  only  be 
regarded  as  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  localism,  the  carrying  to  its 
logical  conclusion  of  that  independence  of  the  sovereign  Princes 
of  Germany  which  had  been  established  at  Westphalia.  Despite 
the  fact  that  Jourdan  was  known  to  have  been  beaten  and  to 
be  in  full  retreat  before  the  Archduke,  that  Moreau’s  position 
was  thereby  rendered  most  perilous,  Bavaria  pledged  herself 
to  neutrality,  withdrew  her  contingent  from  the  Archduke’s 
army,  paid  an  indemnity  of  10  million  livres  and  a  large 
contribution  in  kind,  and  promised  to  facilitate  in  every  way 
the  retreat  of  Moreau  to  the  Rhine. 

It  was  largely  to  this  pusillanimous  action  on  the  part  of 
Bavaria  that  Moreau  owed  his  escape  from  a  dangerously 
exposed  position,  though  his  own  skilful  and  well-ordered 
dispositions  contributed  to  it  in  no  small  measure.  It  must 
also  be  allowed  that  he  owed  much  to  the  want  of  harmony 
among  the  Austrian  forces  engaged  in  harassing  the  retreat, 
while  the  Archduke  cannot  escape  censure  for  not  having 
hastened  sooner  to  transfer  himself,  ahead  of  his  forces,  from 
the  Main  to  the  Danube  in  order  to  give  to  the  pursuit  that 
co-ordination  which  it  lacked  from  the  absence  of  a  single  will 
to  direct  all  the  forces  engaged  in  it.  Thus  when  Moreau,  who 
had  fallen  back  to  the  Iller  on  hearing  of  Jourdan’s  retreat, 
quitted  Ulm  (Sept.  27th)  and  retired  upstream  to  avoid  being 
cut  off  by  the  forces  moving  against  his  line  of  communications 
with  the  Rhine,  divergence  of  opinion  between  the  Austrian 
commanders  came  to  his  aid.  Latour  wished  to  follow  him 
closely,  but  Nauendorf,  who  commanded  a  separate  corps  at 
Ulm,  was  for  marching  across  the  chord  of  the  arc  by  Tubingen 


1796] 


FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 


407 


to  join  Petrasch’s  corps  on  the  Upper  Neckar  and  bar  the 
passage  of  the  Black  Forest.  Unable  to  agree,  they  separated. 
Latour  attacking  with  only  20,000  men  was  so  badly  beaten 
at  Biberach  (Oct.  2nd)  that  he  was  quite  incapable  of  molesting 
the  retreat  further.  Thus  the  French  were  able  to  cross  the 
Black  Forest  by  the  Hdllenthal  in  safety  (Oct.  7th  to  1 5th). 
Too  late  the  Archduke  arrived  and  took  supreme  command ; 
he  could  only  check  a  move  downstream  on  Kehl  (Oct.  19th), 
and  was  unable  to  prevent  the  French  recrossing  the  Rhine 
at  Hiiningen  unmolested  (Oct.  25th). 

The  popular  movement  in  South  Germany  which  the  French 
invasion  had  aroused  was  one  of  great  possibilities  had  Austria 
known  how  to  turn  it  to  advantage.  The  Elector  of  Bavaria 
refused  to  ratify  the  Treaty  of  Pfaffenhofen.  Other  Powers 
which  had  made  terms  for  themselves  endeavoured  to  explain 
their  action.1  But  with  a  man  at  the  head  of  the  Austrian 
ministry  as  narrow  as  Thugut  and  as  incapable  of  inspiring 
or  feeling  confidence,  it  was  not  likely  that  such  a  chance  would 
be  properly  used.  And  peace  was  as  far  off  as  ever.  It  was 
useless  for  England  to  send  Lord  Malmesbury  to  Paris  to 
negotiate  in  the  hope  that  the  expulsion  of  the  French  from 
Germany  would  have  lowered  their  tone  and  disposed  them 
to  peace,  when  France  could  point  to  victories  such  as  those 
of  Bonaparte  in  Italy  as  a  set-off  against  her  reverses  in 
Germany,  and  when  the  addition  of  Spain  to  the  allies  of  France 
led  to  the  evacuation  of  the  Mediterranean  by  the  British  navy. 

Since  the  conquest  of  the  Milanese  and  Beaulieu’s  retreat 
into  Tyrol  the  Italian  campaign  had  centred  at  Mantua,  and 
had  consisted  of  repeated  efforts  to  relieve  that  gallantly 
defended  fortress.  In  July  Wurmser’s  advance  had  forced 
Bonaparte  to  raise  the  siege  for  a  moment ;  but  the  victories 
of  Lonato  (Aug.  3rd)  and  Castiglione  (Aug.  5th)  had  sent 
Wiirmser  back  to  Tyrol  and  allowed  Bonaparte  to  resume 
the  blockade,  though  the  fortress  had  been  replenished  and  the 
French  siege-train  destroyed.  A  second  effort  in  September 
resulted  in  Wiirmser  making  his  way  from  the  Brenta  to  Mantua 
and  reinforcing  the  garrison,  but  at  the  expense  of  being  cut 
off  from  Tyrol  and  himself  besieged.  A  new  army,  mainly 
composed  of  raw  recruits  and  half-trained  Croats,  was  gathered 
by  Alvinzi,  and  in  November  it  renewed  the  attempt.  Checked 

1  Cf.  IlaUsser,  ii.  p.  91. 


4o 8  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1796-7 


at  Caldiero  (Nov.  12th),  Bonaparte  won  a  victory  at  Areola  four 
days  later  (Nov.  16th)  which  threatened  Alvinzi’s  communica¬ 
tions  and  drove  him  back  to  the  mountains.  In  January  a 
final  attempt  was  made.  The  main  body  came  down  the 
Adige  from  Tyrol  only  to  suffer  defeat  at  Rivoli  (Jan.  14th), 
and  a  second  column  under  Provera,  moving  Westward  from 
the  Brenta,  penetrated  to  the  suburbs  of  Mantua  merely  to  be 
crushed  in  its  turn  (Jan.  16th).  This  decided  the  fate  of  Mantua. 
Its  fall  (Feb.  2nd,  1797)  marked  the  end  of  Hapsburg  pre¬ 
dominance  in  Italy.  Though  not  exactly  oppressive,  the  rule 
of  Austria  had  been  far  from  popular.  The  steady  drain  of 
money  to  Vienna  from  the  rich  and  productive  plains  of  Lom¬ 
bardy  had  excited  resentment.  The  old  traditions  of  Guelph 
and  Ghibelline  had  just  sufficient  existence  to  make  it  easy  for 
the  enemies  of  Austria  to  appeal  to  time-honoured  prejudices. 
The  democratic  propaganda  of  the  French  Republic  had  fallen 
on  fruitful  soil  in  the  valley  of  the  Po,  and  the  invaders  had 
been  welcomed  as  deliverers  from  the  “  German  ”  yoke. 

Bonaparte  was  now  free  for  an  advance  against  the  hereditary 
dominions  of  Austria.  Only  some  30,000  dejected  and  dispirited 
troops,  the  survivors  of  many  defeats,  were  in  his  way  ;  and  though 
the  Archduke  Charles  was  sent  to  Illyria  in  the  hope  that  he 
might  stay  Napoleon’s  advance,  the  task  was  beyond  his  powers. 
Three  divisions  under  Massena  advancing  along  the  foot  of  the 
mountains  turned  the  right  flank  of  each  line  of  defence  in 
succession,  the  Piave,  the  Tagliamento  and  the  Isonzo,  as 
Napoleon  advanced  against  it  in  front.  Fierce  fighting  left  the 
all-important  Col  di  Tarvis  in  French  hands,  and  the  Archduke 
beat  a  hurried  retreat.  By  the  end  of  March,  Bonaparte  was 
in  Illyria;  on  the  25th  he  occupied  Laibach.  At  Neumarkt  and 
again  at  Unzmarkt  the  Archduke  was  beaten,  and  by  the  5th 
of  April  the  French  headquarters  were  at  Jiidenberg  in  Styria, 
their  vanguard  at  Leoben  within  80  miles  of  the  Hapsburg 
capital.  Bonaparte’s  advance  produced  a  panic  in  Vienna  and 
lent  weight  to  the  advice  of  that  party  which  had  for  some  time 
past  been  counselling  peace.  Thugut,  supported  by  the  British 
Ambassador,  Morton  Eden,  still  urged  resistance.  His  hopes 
of  inducing  Russia  to  throw  in  her  lot  with  the  Coalition  had 
been  disappointed  when  on  the  very  verge  of  success  1  by  the 
sudden  death  of  Catherine  (Nov.  17th,  1796),  for  her  successor 

1  Cf.  Dropmore  MSS .  iii.  pp.  246,  261. 


1797]  FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 


409 


Paul  favoured  a  Prussian  rather  than  an  Austrian  alliance;  but 
he  had  still  good  arguments  on  his  side.  Bonaparte’s  position 
at  Leoben  was  not  without  its  perils.  He  was  a  long  way  from 
his  base;  communication  even  with  Joubert’s  corps  in  Tyrol 
was  uncertain,  for  the  peasantry  were  in  insurrection,  and  neither 
the  Army  of  the  Rhine  and  Moselle  nor  that  of  the  Sambre  and 
Meuse  could  give  him  any  effective  assistance.1  It  was  at  least 
possible  that  a  last  effort  might  have  forced  even  the  victorious 
Bonaparte  to  recoil  to  Italy.  But  Thugut  was  too  unpopular 
to  rally  a  nation  to  an  effort  of  the  required  description,  and  too 
distrustful  of  popular  movements  to  wish  to  do  so.  At  the  same 
time,  his  credit  had  been  somewhat  shaken  by  recent  disasters, 
by  Pitt’s  profession  of  inability  to  comply  with  the  rather  ex¬ 
orbitant  Austrian  demands  for  pecuniary  help,2  and  by  the 
failure  of  the  negotiations  with  Russia.  The  pacific  counsels 
were  therefore  well  received  by  the  Emperor,  and  it  was  decided 
to  accept  Bonaparte’s  offer  of  terms.  On  April  13th  negotia¬ 
tions  were  begun,  on  the  18th  they  resulted  in  the  Preliminaries 
of  Leoben.  It  was  arranged  that  a  congress  should  be  held  to 
make  peace  between  the  French  Republic  and  the  Empire  on 
the  basis  of  the  “  integrity  ”  of  the  Empire,  and  Austria  ceded 
Belgium  to  France  on  condition  of  receiving  an  equitable  in¬ 
demnity  elsewhere.  This  indemnity  was  defined  in  secret 
articles  by  which  the  Emperor  gave  up  all  his  territory  West  of 
the  Oglio,  receiving  in  return  the  Venetian  territory  between  the 
Oglio,  the  Po  and  the  Adriatic  ;  the  Venetian  Republic  obtaining 
in  exchange  Bologna,  Ferrara  and  Romagna.  Compensation 
in  Germany  was  also  promised  to  the  Duke  of  Modena,  whom 
a  democratic  rising  had  ousted  from  his  duchy.  The  conclusion 
of  these  preliminaries  did  not  bring  negotiations  to  an  end. 
They  dragged  on  through  the  summer  of  1797,  Bonaparte 
threatening  and  blustering,  Thugut  procrastinating  in  the  hope 
that  a  revolution  in  France,  which  seemed  quite  within  the 
bounds  of  possibility,  might  put  the  control  of  affairs  into  the 
hands  of  a  more  moderate  party.3  During  this  time  both  sides 
went  on  with  their  preparations  for  war  as  though  hostilities 

1  Hoche,  who  had  replaced  Jourdan,  did,  it  is  true,  cross  the  Rhine  at  Neuwied 
on  April  18th,  and  he  had  driven  the  Austrians  back  behind  the  Nidda  when  the 
news  of  the  armistice  arrived,  but  he  could  have  done  little  to  help  Bonaparte 
had  a  determined  stand  been  made  and  the  latter’s  communications  attacked. 

2  Cf.  Dropmore  MSS.  iii.  pp.  270  ff. 

3  Cf.  Hausser,  ii.  p.  123, 


4io  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1797 


were  quite  likely  to  be  resumed,  for  Austria  was  most  anxious 
to  avoid  having  to  fulfil  the  obligations  of  Leoben  and  hoped 
to  be  able  to  do  something  for  the  Empire.  However,  the 
tangled  skein  of  diplomacy  was  rudely  broken  when  the  ccnip 
d'etat  of  “  Fructidor  ”  (Sept.  4th)  put  an  end  to  all  chance 
of  a  reaction  in  France.  Bonaparte,  now  feeling  that  he  was 
treading  on  firm  ground,  went  to  the  length  of  addressing  an 
ultimatum  to  Thugut;  peace  must  be  made  by  October  1st 
or  hostilities  would  be  resumed.  Thugut  had  no  alternative 
but  to  send  Count  Louis  Cobenzl — one  of  the  leaders  of  the 
pacific  party — to  Udine  to  conduct  the  negotiations.  Bonaparte 
had  no  wish  to  press  Austria  severely,  for  his  aim  was  to  separate 
Austria  from  England  by  making  peace  acceptable  to  her, 
rather  than  to  humiliate  her,  as  the  Directory,  now  in  a 
Jacobinical  and  ultra-democratic  mood,  wished  to  do.  The 
Treaty  of  Campo  Formio,  signed  on  October  17th,  was  thus 
by  no  means  unfavourable  when  looked  upon  in  the  light  of 
the  dynastic  interests  of  the  Hapsburgs,  although  they  had  to 
purchase  these  advantages  by  conditions  most  disadvantageous 
to  the  Empire  of  which  Francis  II  was  the  nominal  head. 
Austria  gave  up  Lombardy1  and  the  Netherlands.  In  return 
she  was  to  receive  Dalmatia,  Istria  and  the  other  mainland 
possessions  of  Venice,  the  Adige  thus  forming  the  Western 
boundary  of  her  Italian  possessions.  The  Ionian  Islands,  which 
Thugut  had  sought  to  obtain  for  Austria,  went  to  France.  The 
dispossessed  Duke  of  Modena  was  to  receive  the  Breisgau  as  a 
compensation,  thus  establishing  a  cadet  branch  of  the  Hapsburg 
family  at  the  head  waters  of  the  Danube.  The  arranging  of 
a  peace  between  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  and  the  French 
Republic  was  to  be  entrusted  to  a  congress  which  was  to  meet 
for  the  purpose  at  Rastatt.  More  important  in  some  ways 
than  these  published  conditions  were  the  secret  articles 2  by 
which  the  Emperor  promised  to  secure  for  France  the  Rhine 
as  a  frontier  from  Switzerland  as  far  as  Andernach,  thence  the 
boundary  was  to  ascend  the  Nette,  cross  to  the  Roer,  and  descend 

1  This  with  Modena,  Bologna,  Ferrara  and  Romagna  formed  the  Cisalpine 
Republic. 

"  These  secret  articles  were  subsequently  a  stumbling-block  to  a  renewal  of  good 
relations  between  Austria  and  England,  as  Pitt  and  Grenville  believed  that  they 
contained  stipulations  prejudicial  to  the  interests  of  Great  Britain  (cf.  Dropniore  MSS. 
iv.  p.  91)  and  therefore  requested  that  Thugut  would  disclose  the  terms  of  the  agree¬ 
ment.  Hausser,  ii.  pp.  130-13 1. 


1797]  FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 


411 

that  river  to  its  junction  with  the  Meuse.  The  object  of  this 
was  to  leave  Prussia  her  old  possessions  on  the  left  bank,  and 
so  deprive  her  of  all  claim  to  compensation  on  the  right  bank. 
Furthermore,  as  a  “compensation”  for  Belgium,  Austria  was 
to  receive  the  Archbishopric  of  Salzburg  and  the  part  of 
Bavaria  between  the  Inn,  the  Salza,  Tyrol  and  Salzburg.  The 
Emperor  gave  up  all  his  own  claims  upon  Italy,  and  promised 
that  the  Empire  would  do  the  same.  Those  Princes  who  would 
lose  territory  through  the  annexation  of  the  left  bank  to  France, 
including  among  others  the  three  ecclesiastical  Electors,  Bavaria, 
Zweibriicken,  Baden,  the  two  Hesses,  Nassau-Saarbriicken  and 
Wiirtemberg,  were  to  be  compensated  on  the  right  bank. 

Thus  Austria,  despite  her  defeats,  only  lost  provinces  never 
very  easy  to  hold  or  to  govern.  Belgium  was  a  possession  she 
would  have  given  up  gladly  any  time  during  the  last  twenty 
years,  if  she  could  only  have  obtained  a  reasonable  substitute, 
and  certainly  Salzburg  and  the  promised  district  of  Bavaria 
were  in  every  respect  more  desirable  possessions.  Geographi¬ 
cally  they  were  adjacent  to  the  hereditary  dominions,  and 
therefore  their  defence  fell  in  with  the  general  scheme  of 
defensive  preparations.  Their  population  was  closely  akin 
to  that  of  Upper  Austria,  and  would  be  an  addition  to  the 
German  element  among  the  subjects  of  the  Hapsburgs.  Politi¬ 
cally  there  would  be  no  need  to  set  up  an  entirely  separate 
government  for  them.  In  Italy  also  Venetia  with  its  seaboard 
was  a  far  more  useful  possession  than  the  more  distant  Milanese, 
and  it  might  be  hoped  that  its  acquisition  would  mark  the 
beginning  of  a  new  era  in  the  maritime  history  of  Austria. 
But  these  acquisitions  did  not  increase  Austria’s  prestige.  The 
spoliation  of  Venice  was  an  act  of  the  same  class  as  the  seizure  of 
Silesia  and  the  partitions  of  Poland.  Moreover,  the  adoption  of 
the  plan  of  compensation  by  secularisation  was  nothing  more  or 
less  than  making  the  weakest  pay  the  costs  of  the  settlement, 
and  the  concessions  included  in  the  secret  articles  amounted 
to  the  abandonment  of  the  rights  of  that  Empire  of  which 
Austria  posed  as  the  champion.  It  is  true  that  the  suzerainty 
over  Italy  still  nominally  vested  in  the  Holy  Roman  Empire 
had  for  centuries  been  nothing  but  a  name,  but  the  surrender 
of  this  time-honoured  form  at  the  bidding  of  an  upstart  Republic 
could  not  fail  to  deal  a  hard  blow  at  an  Empire  whose  very 
existence  was  a  form.  The  surrender  of  the  left  bank  to  that 


412  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1797 


same  Republic  was  a  not  less  severe  blow  to  the  German 
Kingdom ;  but  worst  of  all  was  the  voice  which  France  was  to 
have  in  the  arrangement  of  the  “compensation.”  One  justifica¬ 
tion  and  one  only  Austria  can  urge  for  her  abandoning  the 
defence  of  the  Empire :  the  selfishness  and  utter  want  of 
patriotism  displayed  by  every  other  member  of  the  Empire 
from  Prussia  and  Bavaria  to  Lippe-Detmold  and  Schwarzburg- 
Sondershausen.  She  did  not  abandon  the  Empire  until  the 
example  had  been  set  and  almost  universally  followed.  Still 
for  the  moment  Germany  was  so  glad  to  be  rid  of  the  war  at 
any  cost  that  the  peace  was  almost  popular. 

The  Peace  of  Campo  Formio  marks  the  complete  failure  of 
the  attempt  of  monarchical  Europe  to  interfere  in  the  affairs 
of  Revolutionary  France.  By  it  Austria  followed  the  example  of 
Prussia  in  making  terms  with  the  formidable  Power  whose 
hostility  their  intervention  had  provoked.  England,  the  only 
Power  which  continued  the  war,  had  not  shared  in  the  interven¬ 
tion  on  behalf  of  the  Bourbons,  and  the  struggle  between  her 
and  the  French  Republic  was  only  another  phase  of  the  old 
maritime  struggle  she  had  waged  with  the  French  Monarchy. 
But  Austria  and  Prussia  had  embarked  on  the  war  in  a  different 
spirit,  and  the  situation  in  which  they  found  themselves  at  the 
end  of  it  might  well  have  induced  their  rulers  to  question  the 
wisdom  of  the  policy  they  had  pursued  and  to  reflect  seriously 
on  its  lessons  for  the  future. 

The  ease  with  which  the  resources  of  Austria  had  stood  the 
strain  of  the  war  was  no  small  testimony  to  the  soundness  of 
the  work  of  reform  carried  on  by  Maria  Theresa  and  her  son, 
but  in  many  respects  Austria  was  slipping  back  into  old  bad 
grooves  of  the  days  before  Maria  Theresa.  She  was  in  sore 
need  of  another  Haugwitz  to  guide  her  internal  affairs  into  more 
healthy  channels,  and  of  another  Kaunitz  to  direct  her  foreign 
policy.  This  was  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  Francis  II,  though 
careful  and  observant,  anxious  to  do  his  duty  by  his  subjects, 
and  anything  but  a  bad  man  or  a  bad  king,  was  not  strong 
enough  for  the  task  before  him.  Drastic  reforms  were  urgently 
needed,  but  Francis  II  could  neither  realise  the  need  nor  be 
persuaded  by  those  who,  like  the  Archduke  Charles,  were  alive 
to  the  evils  of  the  situation.  Rather  narrow-minded,  lacking 
vigour  and  real  statesmanship,  his  very  carefulness  degenerated 
into  pedantry  and  formalism,  his  painstaking  anxiety  to  do  his 


1797]  FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 


4i3 


work  left  him  immersed  in  unimportant  details  of  routine  and 
unable  to  take  a  broad  view,  his  caution  made  him  so  over- 
suspicious  that  he  did  not  trust  his  ministers  enough.  Nor  were 
his  ministers  the  men  to  compensate  for  his  defects.  Kaunitz, 
old,  worn  out,  and  no  longer  able  to  exercise  his  once  pre¬ 
dominant  influence  over  the  affairs  of  the  country,  had  given 
up  the  Chancellorship  in  August  1792;  and  with  all  his  faults 
none  of  his  successors  came  up  to  his  level  as  a  statesman. 
Lehrbach  was  an  intriguer,  whose  only  idea  was  to  obtain 
Bavaria  for  Austria  by  fair  means  or  foul ;  he  was  a  mere 
instrument  in  Thugut’s  hands.  Louis  Cobenzl,  though  in¬ 
dependent  of  Thugut,  was  no  statesman.  Well  versed  in 
intrigue,  well  acquainted  with  Court  backstairs,  he  was  a  man 
of  little  capacity.  Indeed,  Thugut  himself  was  the  only 
man  who  stood  head  and  shoulders  above  the  mediocrities 
around  him,  and  his  supremacy  was  hardly  to  the  advantage 
of  his  country.  Head  of  the  State  Chancery  since  1793,  he 
had  replaced  Philip  Cobenzl  at  the  Foreign  Office  in  1794, 
and  he  practically  ruled  the  army  through  his  friends  and 
creatures  in  the  War  Council.  Energetic,  resolute,  cool  and 
clear-headed,  he  was  utterly  unscrupulous,  cynical  and  un¬ 
principled.  Absolutely  without  popular  sympathies  despite 
his  humble  origin,  he  was  an  ideal  minister  for  a  despot,  the 
typical  upholder  of  feudal  and  religious  absolutism  against  the 
assaults  of  Liberalism  or  democracy.  This  was  best  seen  in  his 
harsh  and  severe  domestic  policy,  in  the  highly-organised  and 
extensive  system  of  espionage  which  he  maintained,  in  the 
atmosphere  of  distrust  and  suspicion  he  communicated  to  all 
branches  of  the  government,  in  the  rigid  centralisation  he 
maintained,  in  the  harsh  press  censorship,  and  in  the  obtrusive 
police  system.  In  a  word,  the  •  internal  troubles  of  Austria 
which  culminated  in  1848  may  be  in  no  small  measure 
attributed  to  the  reactionary  and  repressive  turn  which  Thugut 
gave  to  the  Hapsburg  government.  Nothing  could  have  been 
further  removed  from  the  spirit  of  Maria  Theresa  and  of 
Joseph  II  than  the  attitude  of  harshness  guided  by  suspicion 
which  he  imparted  to  the  dealings  of  the  rulers  of  Austria 
with  their  subjects. 

Under  such  a  man  it  was  not  unnatural  that  Austria  fell 
into  a  stagnant  condition.  Routine  was  everything.  All  changes 
were  distrusted  as  such,  apart  from  their  merits.  Useful  develop- 


414  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1797 


ments  were  prevented  or  cramped.  Reform  was  looked  upon 
as  playing  with  fire,  as  likely  to  lead  to  revolution,  as  Jacobinical. 
Much  of  Joseph’s  best  work,  especially  in  the  religious  and 
educational  spheres,  was  abolished  or  altered,  while  his  bureau¬ 
cracy  remained  and  flourished,  uninspired  by  its  author’s  zeal  for 
efficiency,  for  honesty  and  for  progress.  It  was  to  his  hold  on  to 
the  reins  of  domestic  government  that  Thugut  owed  his  continued 
tenure  of  office,  for  his  foreign  policy  was  rather  too  adventurous 
for  the  less  enterprising  Francis  II.  In  his  hatred  for  Prussia 
he  recalled  the  days  of  Maria  Theresa ;  in  his  adherence  to  the 
English  alliance  and  his  opposition  to  France  he  went  back 
to  Leopold  I  and  the  Grand  Alliance.  It  was  a  policy  for 
which  there  would  have  been  much  to  be  said  had  it  not  been 
marred  by  a  fatal  defect.  His  insatiable  desire  for  territorial 
gain  was  published  by  his  designs  on  Bavaria  and  Poland,  by 
his  readiness  to  sacrifice  the  integrity  of  the  Empire  for  the  sake 
of  Venetia.  His  eagerness  to  turn  to  the  advantage  of  Austria 
the  upheaval  of  Europe  caused  by  the  Revolution  outweighed 
his  desire  to  restore  the  European  equilibrium  by  the  reduction 
of  the  power  of  France.  Certainly  he  made  it  hard  for  an  ally 
to  put  much  trust  in  him.  And  when  all  this  went  hand  in 
hand  with  the  methods  by  which  he  sought  his  ends,  with  his 
lack  of  scruple  and  almost  of  honesty,  it  is  hardly  wonderful 
if  for  all  his  ability  his  policy  went  far  towards  wrecking  the 
Coalition.  It  may  be  perhaps  an  exaggeration  to  say  with  von 
Sybel,  “  to  him  France  owed  her  victory  in  the  Revolutionary 
War,”  but  he  must  ever  be  typical  of  the  way  in  which  diplomatic 
skill  may  overreach  itself,  and  in  which  too  much  cleverness  may 
recoil  on  itself  while  simpler  methods  succeed  by  reason  of  their 
straightforwardness. 

Nor  was  the  condition  of  Austria’s  great  rival  any  more 
healthy.  Frederick  William  II  had  withdrawn  from  the 
Coalition  partly  in  the  hope  that  thereby  he  might  allow  the 
finances  of  Prussia  to  recuperate,  and  might  be  able  to  cure  the 
abuses  which  had  grown  up  in  the  Prussian  administration. 
Moreover,  Prussia  had  a  task  of  no  small  difficulty  to  tackle,  the 
assimilation  of  the  million  or  so  of  Poles  who  had  just  become 
her  unwilling  subjects.  An  even-handed,  capable  and  firm 
treatment  on  the  lines  of  Frederick  Il’s  administration  might 
have  gone  far  towards  reconciling  the  Polish  peasantry  to  the 
loss  of  a  national  independence  which  had  never  meant  good 


1797]  FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 


415 


government  or  given  them  justice  or  material  prosperity,  but 
their  discontent  was  only  augmented  by  an  oppressive,  exacting 
and  corrupt  rule,  by  lavish  and  unwise  grants  of  Polish  land  to 
Prussian  favourites.  Nor  were  the  nobles  any  better  pleased 
with  the  results  of  annexation  to  Prussia.  More  than  any  other 
class  they  resented  the  suppression  of  Poland’s  national  exist¬ 
ence,  since  to  them  it  had  meant  cherished  privileges. 

The  failure  to  achieve  in  the  assimilation  of  the  new  shares 
of  Poland  even  as  much  success  as  Frederick  II  had  obtained 
in  dealing  with  the  provinces  acquired  in  1773,  is  typical  of  the 
general  decline  in  the  efficiency  of  the  Prussian  State.  The 
administration  was  full  of  corrupt  and  indolent  officials,  zeal 
and  energy  were  conspicuous  by  their  absence.  Here  and  there 
individual  officials,  as,  for  example,  Baron  Stein,  at  this  time 
practically  in  charge  of  the  administration  of  the  Westphalian 
provinces  of  Prussia,1  were  exceptions  to  an  all  but  universal 
rule.  But  patriotism,  self-sacrifice,  discipline,  devotion  to  the 
State,  seemed  all  to  have  disappeared  with  Frederick  II.  The 
nobles  were  tending  to  become  a  more  privileged  order,  the 
lower  classes,  groaning  under  heavy  taxation,  were  indifferent 
to  the  welfare  of  the  country,  since  their  lot  was  in  no  way 
improved,  however  matters  might  stand. 

In  the  way  of  Army  Reform  a  certain  amount  had  been 
accomplished  by  a  War  Directory  of  which  Brunswick  and 
Mollendorf  were  the  leading  members.  It  had  added  to  the 
establishment  of  officers,  had  made  some  amelioration  in  the 
conditions  of  service,  and  had  improved  the  equipment  of  the 
troops.  These,  however,  were  but  palliatives  and  could  not 
cure  the  deep-seated  evils  which  1792  had  displayed.2  The 
Army  was  living  in  a  fool’s  Paradise  on  its  old  reputation,  and 
was  doing  nothing  to  keep  itself  in  touch  with  the  changes  in 
tactics  and  strategy  which  the  Revolution  had  brought  in  its 
train. 

The  tone  of  society  was  not  only  bad,  but,  following  the 
example  of  the  Court,  it  was  hypocritical.  Frederick  William  II 
might  try  to  cloak  his  immorality  behind  a  show  of  devotion, 
his  imitators  in  Prussian  society  did  not  trouble  themselves  with 
that  amount  of  concession  to  the  proprieties.  At  the  same  time 

1  Cf.  Seeley,  vol.  i.  bk.  i.  2. 

2  Cf.  Chuquet’s  chapter  on  the  Prussian  Army,  Les  Guerres  de  la  Revolution t 
vol.  i.  ch.  iii. 


4i 6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1797 


there  was  much  interference  with  opinion,  almost  amounting  to 
a  religious  persecution  of  a  petty  and  futile  description,  an 
attempt  to  impose  on  every  one  a  flabby  and  formal  orthodoxy. 

In  the  finances  the  effects  of  this  decline  in  efficiency  were 
most  marked.  Once  the  bureaucracy  lost  that  automatic  pre¬ 
cision  and  punctuality  imparted  by  the  iron  discipline  maintained 
under  Frederick  II,  the  task  of  making  both  ends  meet  proved 
altogether  too  much  for  it.  The  reserve  fund  left  by  Frederick  II 
had  been  spent ;  the  tobacco  monopoly,  abolished  with  so  much 
parade  at  Frederick  William  Il’s  accession,  had  been  reimposed 
in  1797 ;  but  the  revenue  could  not  nearly  balance  the  expenses. 

With  the  death  of  Frederick  William  II  in  November  1797, 
certain  changes  were  made,  but  only  in  degree,  not  in  kind:1 
Prussia  continued  to  follow  the  same  paths  both  in  domestic 
and  in  foreign  policy.  Free  from  his  father’s  combination  of 
mysticism,  superstition,  hypocrisy  and  immorality,  Frederick 
William  III  was  too  narrow-minded  and  too  diffident  to  pull 
Prussia  out  of  the  mire  in  which  she  was  becoming  involved. 
By  himself  he  could  do  little,  he  needed  some  really  great 
statesman  to  help  him.  Simple,  pious  and  straightforward,  but 
rather  stupid,  he  was  lacking  in  vigour  and  in  decision,  and 
though  he  did  impart  to  the  administration  rather  more  order 
and  economy,  he  was  not  the  man  to  carry  out  wide  reforms  or 
to  insist  upon  and  obtain  administrative  efficiency  by  means  of 
close  personal  supervision.  Nor  were  his  ministers  more  likely 
to  do  this.  Haugwitz,  in  whom  love  of  power  was  so  strong  that 
he  was  ready  to  sacrifice  any  principles  or  personal  convictions 
which  might  have  proved  inconvenient  to  his  master,  if  only  he 
could  thereby  indulge  his  ruling  passion,  had  since  1792  been 
mainly  responsible  for  the  conduct  of  foreign  affairs.  Lombard, 
a  clever  but  untrustworthy  man,  was  all-influential  in  domestic 
policy.  From  them  reforms  were  not  to  be  expected,  negligence 
in  discharge  of  duties  went  almost  unpunished.  The  selfish  and 
short-sighted  policy  of  peace  which  Prussia  followed  to  her  own 
undoing  was  only  one  manifestation  of  the  thoroughly  unsound 
condition  into  which  the  country  had  fallen.  Whatever  argu¬ 
ments  might  have  been  urged  in  defence  of  the  Peace  of  Basel 
when  it  was  first  concluded,  the  experiences  of  the  years  which 
followed  it  should  have  shown  a  statesman  capable  of  grasping 

1  The  “immediate”  departments  which  had  hitherto  been  independent  of  the 
General  Directory  were  incorporated  with  it. 


1798] 


FROM  BASEL  TO  CAMPO  FORMIO 


417 


the  essential  features  of  the  state  of  Europe  how  dangerous  a 
policy  Prussia  was  pursuing.  Pitt  had  seized  the  occasion  of 
the  accession  of  the  new  King  to  attempt  by  the  aid  of  the 
Duke  of  Brunswick  to  oust  from  office  Haugwitz,  whom  he 
regarded  as  mainly  responsible  for  the  Peace  of  Basel  and  the 
subsequent  inaction  of  Prussia.  But  Brunswick,  though  alive  to 
the  dangers  of  continued  neutrality  and  personally  hostile  to 
Haugwitz,1  was  too  afraid  of  the  consequences  of  a  breach  with 
the  Republic  to  urge  any  such  departure  ;  and  though,  as  the 
negotiations  of  the  winter  of  1797-1798  showed,2  it  was  no 
longer  Haugwitz  who  was  the  main  obstacle  to  a  change  of 
policy,  the  advocates  of  neutrality  led  by  Schulemberg  and 
Prince  Henry  were  still  strong  enough  to  carry  the  day.  All 
that  Prussia  would  offer  England  was  that  in  return  for  a  con¬ 
siderable  subsidy  she  would  mobilise  her  troops  in  order  to 
preserve  the  neutrality  of  the  line  of  demarcation ;  and  as 
England  was  not  prepared  “  to  pay  an  extravagant  price  for 
what  we  think  of  little  value,”  3  Prussia,  despite  the  misgivings 
which  haunted  several  of  her  wisest  statesmen,  adhered  to  the 
policy  of  the  Peace  of  Basel.  Between  the  alternatives  of 
joining  the  rest  of  Europe  in  resisting  French  aggression  and  of 
frankly  throwing  in  her  lot  with  France,  she  was  endeavouring 
to  pursue  a  middle  course  which  combined  some  of  the  disad¬ 
vantages  of  both.  Mischievous  as  her  conduct  was  in  its  in¬ 
fluence  over  Germany,  in  assisting  the  spirit  of  division  which 
it  was  the  aim  of  France  to  foster,  in  offering  to  the  minor 
Powers  “  the  specious  appearance  of  peace  and  neutrality,” 4 
while  Austria  was  seeking  to  induce  them  to  join  her  in  a  war 
which  concerned  them  no  less  than  her,  Prussia  herself  was  no 
gainer  by  her  policy.  By  refusing  a  definite  alliance  with 
France  she  showed  her  suspicion  and  fear  of  the  Republic’s 
successes,  and  thus  failed  to  obtain  any  return  for  the  consider¬ 
able  services  she  was  rendering  to  the  Republic  by  holding 
aloof  from  the  Coalitions.  She  earned  contempt  rather  than 
gratitude;  and  when  she  at  last  realised  in  1806  the  true 
tendencies  of  French  policy,  France  had  no  reason  to  spare 
the  country  by  whose  short-sightedness  and  indecision  she  had 
profited  so  much. 

1  Cf.  Dropmore  MSS.  iv.  405.  2  Ibid,  passim. 

3  T.  Grenville  to  Lord  Grenville,  ibid.  p.  514.  4  Ibid.  p.  490. 


27 


CHAPTER  XXI 


RASTATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION 

IN  concluding  secret  compacts  with  France  in  the  hope  of 
purchasing  her  good  offices  at  the  coming  Congress, 
Austria  and  Prussia  had  not  been  alone.  Indeed,  most  of  the 
minor  Powers  had  sought  to  safeguard  their  interests  by  this 
expedient,  from  which  it  might  have  been  foreseen  that  France 
rather  than  any  German  Power  would  play  the  chief  part  at 
Rastatt,  and  that  her  interests  would  prevail  in  the  resettlement 
of  Germany.  Her  diplomatists  were  not  slow  to  grasp  the  oppor¬ 
tunity  which  the  estrangement  of  Austria  and  Prussia  gave 
them,  and  by  insinuating  to  each  Power  in  turn  that  only  the 
opposition  of  its  rival  prevented  the  realisation  of  its  own 
desires  they  managed  to  still  further  widen  the  breach  between 
these  two  leading  German  states.  At  the  same  time,  the  French 
sought  to  excite  the  alarms  of  the  minor  states,  to  instil  into 
them  distrust  of  Hapsburg  and  Hohenzollern  alike,  and  teach 
them  to  look  across  the  Rhine  for  protection.  By  showing  her¬ 
self  well  disposed  to  the  Princes  and  to  their  claims  for  com¬ 
pensation,  France  divided  them  from  the  Bishops,  at  whose  cost 
alone  compensation  could  be  provided.  Indeed,  abortive  though 
the  Congress  was,  the  foundations  of  the  Confederation  of  the 
Rhine  were  laid  at  Rastatt. 

The  principal  questions  which  occupied  the  attention  of  the 
Congress  were  those  of  the  Left  Bank  and  of  “  compensation.” 
On  the  first  point,  the  French  envoys  adopted  from  the  outset  a 
most  peremptory  tone,  declaring  that  the  assistance  and  shelter 
given  to  the  emigres  by  the  Princes  of  that  district  had  been 
one  of  the  chief  causes  of  the  war.  The  Austrians  had  carried 
out  the  Convention  of  December  ist,  and  their  evacuation  of 
the  fortresses  as  they  departed  homeward  proved  conclusively 
that  Austria  had  made  up  her  mind  not  to  resist,  and  no  other 
state  was  likely  to  oppose  the  cession.  Even  the  Ecclesiastical 
Electors  were  more  concerned  with  the  chances  of  avoiding 

413 


1798]  RASTATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION  419 


secularisation  than  with  saving  the  Left  Bank.  There  was  no 
one  to  speak  on  behalf  of  the  Empire,  which  would  receive  no 
compensation  for  the  25,000  square  miles  and  the  3J  million 
inhabitants  which  it  was  losing,  however  skilfully  the  territorial 
cards  were  shuffled.  Dynasties  might  obtain  complete  com¬ 
pensation,  might  even  gain,  but  some  one  had  to  bear  the  loss, 
and  it  was  upon  the  helpless  and  inarticulate  corporate  body  to 
which  they  belonged  that  the  dynasties  of  Germany  managed 
to  shift  the  burden  of  the  loss.  In  January  1798  the  incorpora¬ 
tion  of  the  Left  Bank  with  France,  its  division  into  departments, 
and  its  complete  subjection  to  French  codes  and  arrangements, 
took  place,  though  nearly  two  months  more  elapsed  before  the 
deputation  appointed  by  the  Diet  formally  agreed  to  the  cession 
(March  nth). 

The  question  of  compensation  and  the  closely  connected 
problem  of  secularisation  provided  the  Congress  with  ample 
material  for  discussion  and  for  intrigues  of  every  kind  during 
the  remainder  of  its  existence.  Into  these  it  is  unnecessary  to 
go,  since  the  renewal  of  hostilities  brought  its  deliberations  to 
an  abortive  close.  The  problem  was  one  which  if  tackled  by 
men  who  really  had  the  interests  of  Germany  at  heart,  might 
perhaps  have  resulted  in  a  real  reform  of  the  Empire,  might 
have  given  it  a  new  constitution  and  a  new  lease  of  life.  There 
were  not  wanting  optimists  who  hoped  that  the  beginning  of  a 
new  era  for  Germany  might  be  dated  from  the  Congress  of 
Rastatt.  Such  a  result,  however,  difficult  to  reach  under  any 
circumstances,  was  quite  out  of  the  question  when  the  pre¬ 
dominant  partner  in  the  Congress  was  the  Power  to  whose 
interests  a  real  revival  of  Germany  was  most  inimical.  Even 
now,  if  Austria  and  Prussia  could  have  agreed  to  sink  their 
differences  and  to  make  a  stand  against  the  policy  of  the 
Directory,  it  might  have  been  possible  to  turn  the  Congress  to 
a  useful  end.  However,  co-operation  was  as  far  off  as  ever. 
Haugwitz  was  as  much  an  object  of  aversion  and  suspicion 
at  Vienna  as  was  Thugut  at  Berlin.  The  old  hostility,  the  old 
jealousy  and  the  old  suspicions  survived  in  great  strength  and 
frustrated  the  efforts  of  those  who  sought  to  bring  the  old  rivals 
together;  and  France  spared  no  efforts  to  keep  the  breach 
between  them  open.1  Both  favoured  or  opposed  each  proposal, 
each  suggested  territorial  rearrangement  according  as  it  was 
1  Cf.  P.  Bailleu,  Preussen  und  Frankreich ,  1795-1806. 


420  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1798 


more  or  less  disadvantageous  to  the  other.  Prussia  would  give 
up  her  claims  on  compensation  if  Austria  were  to  receive  nothing. 
Austria  was  prepared  to  do  without  Salzburg  if  Prussia  made  no 
new  acquisitions.  Moreover,  the  designs  which  Thugut  enter¬ 
tained  on  Bavaria  were  a  stumbling-block  in  the  path  of  any 
possible  understanding. 

The  Left  Bank  once  lost,  the  question  of  secularisation  was 
inevitably  brought  forward.  By  secularisation  alone  could  the 
necessary  “  compensation  ”  be  provided.  But  it  was  not  with¬ 
out  some  misgivings  that  Germany  approached  the  problem. 
Every  one  saw  that  the  secularisation  of  the  ecclesiastical  states 
would  be  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  the  old  constitution  and  of 
the  old  order  of  things,  but  nobody  could  tell  where  the  process 
would  end,  and  all  felt  not  a  little  nervous  about  the  future. 
Hanover  and  Saxony,  for  example,  shared  Austria’s  wish  to 
confine  any  secularising  to  very  limited  dimensions.  Their 
rivals  would  profit  more  by  it  than  would  they  themselves, 
therefore  they  opposed  any  wide-sweeping  measures.  But  the 
smaller  states  as  a  whole,  those  large  enough  to  be  sure  of 
getting  some  morsel  of  ecclesiastical  land,  some  abbey  or  priory, 
clamoured  keenly  for  secularisation  as  “  the  only  way  to  restore 
efficiency  to  the  Empire”1  —  in  other  words,  the  only  thing 
likely  to  benefit  them  individually. 

In  May  the  deliberations  of  the  Congress  were  rudely  en¬ 
livened  by  the  production  by  the  French  emissaries  of  an  entirely 
new  series  of  demands.  The  Rhine  was  to  be  free  to  traffic,  all 
tolls  were  to  be  abolished,  Kehl  and  Castel  were  to  be  handed 
over  to  France,  Ehrenbreitstein  was  to  be  “  slighted,”  the  islands 
in  the  river  were  to  be  allotted  to  the  Republic.  From  June 
onwards  the  Congress  spent  its  time  in  making  a  futile  opposi¬ 
tion  to  these  and  other  equally  new  demands.  But  it  was 
rapidly  becoming  more  certain  that  a  fresh  appeal  to  the  sword 
was  imminent,  for  the  aggressive  and  disingenuous  policy  of 
the  Directory  allowed  little  hope  of  a  stable  peace  ever  being 
reached  by  negotiation. 

In  their  dealings  with  Germany  the  Directors  had  all  along 
shown  themselves  tainted  with  that  same  disregard  for  treaties, 
for  the  most  solemn  promises  and  the  most  definite  agreements, 
which  had  characterised  the  Convention.  French  emissaries 
had  been  sedulously  spreading  the  Revolutionary  propaganda 

1  Cf.  Haiisser,  ii.  p.  164. 


1798]  RASTATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION  421 


throughout  South  Germany,  stirring  up  the  peasantry,  fomenting 
social  discontent.  The  Directory  did,  indeed,  disavow  these  agita¬ 
tors,  but  their  conduct  was  exactly  the  same  as  the  line  its  agents 
were  pursuing  in  Switzerland  and  in  the  Papal  States,  where 
democratic  discontent  was  excited,  to  be  used  as  a  pretext  for 
intervention.  Similarly,  in  the  matter  of  Ehrenbreitstein  they 
hardly  even  pretended  to  abide  by  the  conditions  of  the  armistice 
arranged  between  Hoche  and  Werneck  in  April  1797.  The 
fortress  was  held  by  an  Austrian  garrison  which  was  allowed  to 
periodically  reprovision  itself,  though  not  to  increase  its  supplies 
beyond  the  amount  in  stock  when  the  armistice  was  concluded. 
When,  in  December  1797,  the  Austrians  withdrew,  2500  men  in 
the  service  of  the  Elector  of  Treves  replaced  them;  but  the 
French  in  deliberate  violation  of  the  armistice  resumed  the  close 
blockade  of  the  fortress.  Not  content  with  this,  they  kept  on 
raiding  the  Right  Bank,  levying  forced  contributions  and  sub¬ 
jecting  the  inhabitants  to  all  manner  of  violence.  Such  conduct 
was  by  itself  sufficient  indication  of  the  intentions  of  the  French, 
and  an  ample  justification  for  breaking  off  negotiations.  More¬ 
over,  their  behaviour  went  far  to  alienate  even  their  strongest 
supporters  in  the  Rhine  lands.  The  annexation  of  all  ecclesi¬ 
astical  and  monastic  property,  the  introduction  of  the  French 
codes  of  law,  calendar  and  tables  of  weights  and  measures,  the 
appointment  of  Frenchmen  to  all  the  new  posts  and  offices,  the 
abolition  of  the  old  German  education,  briefly,  the  contrast 
between  the  promised  liberty  and  the  practical  oppression 
roused  a  very  strong  anti-French  feeling  in  the  Rhine  valley. 

In  April  1798  relations  between  France  and  Austria  were 
still  further  strained  by  an  incident  which  took  place  at  Vienna. 
Bernadotte,  the  French  Ambassador,  had  been  sent  there  with 
the  definite  object  of  mixing  himself  up  in  the  internal  politics 
of  Austria  and  endeavouring  to  overthrow  Thugut,  or  at  least 
to  undermine  the  position  of  that  strenuous  opponent  of  France. 
On  April  13th  he  provoked  a  riot  by  displaying  a  Tricolour  on 
his  house.  The  mob,  enraged  by  this,  stormed  the  house  and 
tore  down  the  flag.  Bernadotte  made  all  the  political  use  he 
could  of  this  incident.  He  demanded  his  passports  and  even 
quitted  Vienna.  This  might  have  been  followed  by  war,  but 
that  the  provocation  came  from  France  before  the  financial  or 
military  situation  of  Austria  had  improved  sufficiently  to  enable 
her  to  defy  the  Republic,  and  the  Emperor  humbled  himself  to 


422  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1798 


make  a  concession  to  France  which  for  the  time  averted  a 
rupture  :  Thugut  gave  up  his  post  as  Foreign  Minister  (May  1st) 
and  confined  himself  to  domestic  affairs,  Louis  Cobenzl,  a  strong 
advocate  of  peace  with  France,  replacing  him.  The  change  was 
seen  in  the  private  negotiations  between  the  Hapsburgs  and 
the  French,  which  now  took  place  at  Selz  near  Rastatt ;  for 
Francis  was  anything  but  bellicose,  and  Cobenzl  would  have 
been  glad  to  avert  a  renewal  of  hostilities  by  coming  to  terms 
With  France.  But  the  French  were  not  prepared  to  bid  high 
enough  for  Austria’s  neutrality,  and  even  Cobenzl  had  to  admit 
that  with  such  a  Power  it  was  almost  impossible  to  come  to 
terms.  By  the  middle  of  July  Thugut  was  back  in  office, 
Cobenzl  going  off  on  a  special  embassy  to  Berlin  with  the 
object  of  inducing  Prussia  to  come  into  line  with  Austria  and 
Russia  to  resist  further  French  aggressions,  for  events  elsewhere 
were  moving  rapidly  towards  the  now  inevitable  war. 

The  intervention  of  the  Directory  in  the  affairs  of  Switzerland 
(April  1798)  has  already  been  mentioned  (p.  421).  The  annexa¬ 
tion  of  Biel,  Geneva  and  Mtihlhausen  to  France  might  be  de¬ 
fended  on  geographical  grounds,  but  it  was  an  arbitrary  and 
rapacious  act,  extremely  disconcerting  to  the  other  neighbours  of 
the  Republic.  The  appropriation  of  the  contents  of  the  treasuries 
of  Berne,  Lucerne  and  Zurich — 16  million  francs  in  cash  be¬ 
sides  goods  of  about  equal  value — to  the  purposes  of  Bonaparte’s 
Egyptian  expedition  was  an  utterly  unjustifiable  example  ot 
high-handed  violence,  and  showed  that  the  Helvetic  Republic 
was  little  more  than  a  vassal  of  France — in  other  words,  that  the 
strategical  situation  had  been  materially  altered  to  Austria’s 
disadvantage,  as  her  armies  in  Swabia  would  no  longer  have 
their  left  flank  protected  by  the  neutrality  of  the  territory  to  the 
South.  About  the  same  time  (March  1798)  the  intervention 
of  the  Directory  in  the  internal  affairs  of  the  Batavian  Republic 
gave  an  example  of  the  real  meaning  of  the  liberty  and  in¬ 
dependence  enjoyed  by  the  states  under  the  protection  of 
France.  Nor  were  these  outrages  confined  to  the  valley  of  the 
Rhine.  The  mixture  of  treachery  and  force  displayed  by 
Bonaparte’s  treatment  of  the  Knights  of  St.  John  and  his 
seizure  of  Malta  had  the  important  effect  of  enraging  the  Czar 
Paul,  already  alarmed  by  the  progress  of  French  arms  and 
principles  and  anxious  to  test  the  armies  of  Holy  Russia  against 
the  conquerors  of  the  rest  of  Europe.  Austria,  finding  it  likely 


1798]  RASTATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION  423 

that  she  would  have  the  zealous  support  of  Russia  if  she  took 
up  arms,  was  growing  more  bellicose,  and  her  warlike  disposi¬ 
tions  were  increased  by  the  action  of  France  in  Italy,  where  the 
arrangements  made  at  Campo  Formio,  on  the  whole  not 
unfavourable  to  Austria  and  her  friends,  were  being  radically 
altered.  The  assassination  of  the  French  envoy  at  Rome, 
Duphot,  served  as  a  pretext  for  Berthier  to  attack  Rome,  drive 
out  Pope  Pius  VI,  and  proclain  the  Roman  Republic  (Feb.  1798); 
and  when  the  King  of  the  Two  Sicilies,  encouraged  by  Nelson’s 
victory  at  the  Nile  to  measure  his  strength  with  the  Power 
which  was  so  rapidly  subjugating  all  Italy,  rashly  attacked  this 
unwelcome  new  neighbour  and  occupied  Rome  (Nov.  29th), 
Championnet  not  only  promptly  expelled  the  Neapolitans, 
but  followed  up  his  success  by  invading  their  territory.  The 
Court  took  refuge  in  Sicily,  and  France  added  the  Parthenopean 
Republic  to  the  list  of  her  clients  (Jan.  1799).  Nor  was  this  all. 
In  December  1798,  Charles  Emmanuel  of  Savoy  was  forced  to 
abandon  his  continental  for  his  insular  dominions,  and  a  Prince 
of  the  Hapsburg  House,  Archduke  Ferdinand  of  Tuscany,  was 
forcibly  dispossessed  of  his  Duchy. 

Such  a  series  of  outrages,  of  violations  of  treaties,  of  unpro¬ 
voked  aggressions,  could  have  but  one  result:  indeed,  it  is  only 
remarkable  that  the  Powers  of  Europe  were  so  long  about 
uniting  to  withstand  the  Directory.  It  was  no  fault  of  England’s, 
for,  since  the  beginning  of  1798,  Pitt  had  been  seeking  to  bring 
together  a  new  coalition.  But  while  acrimonious  disputes  over 
the  repayment  of  money  lent  to  the  Emperor  in  the  previous 
war  prevented  cordial  co-operation  between  Austria  and  Great 
Britain,  the  extravagances  and  eccentric  conduct  of  Paul  of 
Russia  made  Francis  II  more  than  usually  cautious  about  com¬ 
mitting  himself  to  any  course  of  action  in  which  he  might  find 
himself  left  suddenly  in  the  lurch  through  the  vagaries  of  his 
unstable  Eastern  neighbour.  The  return  of  Thugut  to  office 
(July  1798),  the  conclusion  of  a  convention  with  Russia  (Aug. 
loth)  promising  military  aid  to  the  Emperor,  the  signature  of 
an  Anglo-Russian  Treaty  (Dec.  29th,  1798),  mark  stages  in 
the  slow  progress  by  which  at  last  Austria  came  to  draw  the 
sword.  Her  declaration  of  war  (March  12th,  1799)  would  have 
been  more  efficacious  had  it  been  launched  six  months  earlier, 
when  France  was  still  staggering  under  the  news  of  destruction 
of  her  Mediterranean  fleet  at  the  Nile.  The  delay  is  to  be 


424  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1799 


attributed  to  her  desire  to  give  her  shattered  resources  time  to 
recuperate,  and  to  the  need  for  more  military  preparations. 

From  the  Second  Coalition,  which  comprised  Austria,  Eng¬ 
land,  Naples  and  Russia,  one  Power  was  absent  which,  both  for 
her  own  interests  and  for  those  of  Europe,  ought  to  have  been 
prominent  in  its  ranks.  Not  the  least  important  causes  of  the 
renewal  of  hostilities  was  the  utterly  unreasonable  rapacity 
displayed  by  the  French  at  Rastatt.  Their  conduct  towards 
Germany  had  been  too  unblushingly  aggressive  for  any  German 
statesman  with  any  claim  to  foresight  or  national  spirit,  or  even 
to  a  correct  appreciation  of  the  interests  of  his  own  particular 
state,  to  overlook  the  serious  menace  to  the  independence  of 
Germany.  Yet  Frederick  William  III  clung  obstinately  to  his 
father’s  policy  of  neutrality,  which  had  already  been  weighed 
in  the  balance  and  found  wanting.  One  may  explain,  one  may 
to  some  extent  excuse  the  Peace  of  Basel;  1806  is  the  best 
comment  on  the  inglorious  inaction  of  1799. 

Prussia’s  continued  neutrality  was  a  great  disappointment 
to  the  Allies.  Every  effort  was  made  to  bring  her  into  line  with 
the  other  Powers.  Her  relations  with  France  were  not  of  the 
most  cordial,  and  Austria  and  Russia  hoped  to  use  this  to  enlist 
her  on  their  side.  Haugwitz  himself  had  begun  to  realise  how 
dangerous  to  Prussia  was  the  supremacy  of  France,  and  to  see 
that  Prussia  had  more  in  common  with  Austria  and  Russia  than 
with  the  Republic ;  in  fact,  Prussia  had  gone  so  far  as  to  reject 
the  overtures  of  Sieyes  for  a  definite  alliance  with  France  (May 
1798).  Alvensleben,  indeed,  foretelling  the  collapse  of  the 
Prussian  military  system,  did  argue  that  the  French  alliance 
was  the  only  road  to  safety,  since  it  would  enable  Prussia  to 
turn  the  resettlement  of  Germany  to  her  own  benefit  and  the 
disadvantage  of  Austria ; 1  but  the  King  was  not  well  disposed 
towards  such  a  step.  Yet  Prussia  could  not  or  would  not  see 
that  for  once  there  was  no  safety  in  the  middle  path.  It  was 
in  vain  that  representatives  of  the  four  principal  Powers  of 
Europe  met  at  Berlin  (May  28th)  to  discuss  the  formation  of  an 
alliance  ;  in  vain  that  England  and  the  Czar  sought  to  induce 
Prussia  to  join  in  a  Quadruple  Alliance  for  the  reduction  of 
France  to  her  old  limits,  the  restoration  of  the  House  of  Orange 
to  Holland,  and  the  re-establishment  of  the  integrity  of  Germany. 
Beguiled  by  Talleyrand’s  assurances  that  France  would  respect 

1  Cf.  Bail  leu,  Preussen  und  Frankreich. 


1799]  RASTATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION  425 


the  neutrality  of  North  Germany,  Frederick  William  failed  to 
see  that  the  success  of  France  would  place  Germany  at  the 
mercy  of  the  Republic,  and  that,  if  the  Coalition  were  victorious, 
Prussia’s  voice  would  not  be  listened  to  when  the  affairs  of 
Europe  were  resettled  unless  she  had  shared  in  earning  the  fruits 
of  victory.  Hesitation  and  indecision  governed  her  policy,  and 
there  could  be  no  better  illustration  of  her  endeavour  to  run 
with  the  hare  and  hunt  with  the  hounds  than  the  advice  she 
gave  to  the  new  Elector  of  Bavaria,  Maximilian  Joseph  of 
Zweibriicken.  This  Prince  succeeded  to  the  Wittelsbach  in¬ 
heritance  on  the  death  (Feb.  1799)  of  his  cousin  Charles 
Theodore.  Bavaria’s  position  was  critical.  Thugut’s  designs 
on  the  Electorate  were  an  open  secret.  The  events  of  1795  1 
had  not  been  forgotten  by  Austria ;  it  was  thought  more  than 
probable  that  Austria’s  hostility  would  leave  Maximilian  no 
alternative  but  to  rely  on  French  assistance.  However,  neither 
the  new  Elector  himself  nor  his  chief  minister,  the  Savoyard 
Montgelas,  regarded  the  friendship  of  France  with  much  con¬ 
fidence,  and  once  again,  as  in  1786,  it  was  to  Prussia  that 
Maximilian  turned  for  protection.2  But  Prussia  could  do  no 
more  for  Bavaria  than  advise  her  most  emphatically  to  do 
nothing  that  could  give  the  Coalition  reasonable  grounds  for 
taking  offence.  Thus  left  in  the  lurch,  Maximilian  Joseph  had 
only  one  expedient  remaining  by  which  to  avert  the  hostility 
of  the  Coalition.  He  knew  that  Thugut  was  doing  all  he  could 
to  incite  the  Czar  against  him,  for  the  head  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire  was  so  reduced  that  he  dared  take  no  step  except  with 
the  consent  of  the  monarch  who  claimed  to  be  the  heir  of 
Byzantium,  by  representing  to  Paul  that  Bavaria  was  a  partisan 
of  France  and  a  nursery  of  Jacobin  intrigue.  Maximilian 
therefore  threw  in  his  lot  with  the  Coalition,  and  Bavaria  was 
one  of  the  few  minor  states  of  Germany  which  took  an  active 
part  in  the  war.  The  conduct  of  the  German  Princes  as  a  whole 
was  not  very  creditable  either  to  their  patriotism  or  to  their 
sense.  Not  even  yet  awakened  to  a  full  understanding  of  the 
meaning  of  French  supremacy,  they  would  have  much  preferred 
to  see  the  completion  of  a  settlement  based  on  the  secularisation 
of  the  ecclesiastical  states  and  dictated  by  France,  to  the  renewal 
of  the  attempt  to  confine  the  power  of  France  within  reasonable 
bounds. 

1  Cf.  p.  399. 


2  Cf.  Der  Krieg  von  i799>  i*  PP-  102  ff. 


426  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1799 


By  the  beginning  of  1799  it  was  certain  that  hostilities 
would  be  resumed  as  soon  as  the  season  made  operations 
possible.  The  gallant  defenders  of  Ehrenbreitstein  were 
compelled  to  surrender  before  January  was  over;  for,  though 
Austria  was  making  preparations  for  war  on  a  considerable 
scale,  the  relief  of  the  fortress  was  out  of  the  question.  The 
Archduke  Charles,  with  a  perhaps  undue  caution,  put  off  the 
opening  of  hostilities,  although  delay  was,  had  he  only  realised 
it,  even  more  useful  to  the  French  than  to  their  enemies,1  and 
in  the  end  it  was  the  French  who  on  March  1st  opened  the 
campaign  by  crossing  the  Rhine. 

The  peculiarity  of  the  campaign  of  1799  is  the  prominence 
of  Switzerland  as  a  theatre  of  operations.  Despite  the  difficulties 
of  moving,  feeding  and  manoeuvring  armies  among  its  mountains 
and  in  its  narrow  valleys,  its  position  between  Italy  and  Germany 
made  its  possession  of  vital  importance  to  the  combatants,  since 
it  served  as  the  pivot  on  which  the  campaign  turned.  From  it 
as  from  a  bastion,  blows  could  be  struck  against  the  flanks  of 
the  forces  contending  in  the  valleys  of  the  Po  and  of  the  Danube  ; 
it  would  be  exceedingly  difficult  to  defend  Swabia  against  a 
French  advance  from  Alsace  if  at  any  moment  the  defenders 
might  be  taken  in  flank  and  rear  by  forces  debouching  from 
Switzerland.  Through  it  also  ran  the  most  direct  routes  by 
which  reinforcements  might  be  detached  from  one  wing  to  the 
other.  Unless  Switzerland  were  wrested  from  Massena’s  posses¬ 
sion  Archduke  Charles  in  the  valley  of  the  Danube  would 
be  unable  to  communicate  with  Suvorov  in  Italy  except  by 
most  circuitous  routes :  the  French  would  hold  the  interior 
position  and  be  able  to  direct  their  blows  against  either  enemy 
as  they  would. 

I  hus  while  Scherer  with  60,000  men  took  post  along  the 
line  of  the  Adige  to  cover  the  Cisalpine  Republic  against  the 
60,000  Austrians  of  Kray,  and  Jourdan  with  48,000  advanced 
across  the  Black  Forest  to  Rottweil  and  Tuttlingen  to  contend 
with  Archduke  Charles  (70,000)  for  the  upper  valley  of  the 
Danube,  Massena  with  30,000  men  pushed  forward  through 
Switzerland  across  the  Upper  Rhine  in  the  hope  of  driving  the 
Austrians  from  the  Vorarlberg  back  into  Tyrol,  and  thereby 
completely  severing  their  communications  and  menacing  their 
flanks  should  their  wings  be  successful. 

1  Cf.  Huffer,  Der  Krieg  von  1799,  k  PP-  19?  20. 


1799]  HAST  ATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION  427 


It  was  about  March  6th  that  Massdna  began  his  advance. 
The  Austrians,  some  26,000  men  under  a  general  of  Swiss 
birth,  the  gallant  Hotze,  extended  from  Bregenz  to  Chur.  On 
the  left  Massena’s  vigorous  attacks,  well  conceived  and  well 
executed,  drove  them  back  into  the  Engadine.  Almost  simul¬ 
taneously  Lecourbe  forced  his  way  from  Bellinzona  to  Thusis, 
and  pushing  on  thence  by  the  Julier  Pass  drove  back  into 
Tyrol  the  detachments  of  Bellegarde’s  unduly  scattered  corps 
(March  6th  to  17th).  Dessolles,  coming  up  the  Valtelline, 
forced  his  way  after  heavy  fighting  into  the  Miinsterthal  and 
inflicted  on  the  Austrians  a  severe  reverse  at  Taufers  (March 
25th),  for  which  Bellegarde’s  own  carelessness  was  responsible. 
Only  on  their  right  at  Feldkirch  did  the  Austrians  manage  to 
maintain  their  ground  ;  but  the  end  of  March  saw  the  French 
firmly  established  on  the  upper  waters  of  the  Inn  and  of  the 
Adige ;  the  Engadine  and  the  Grisons  were  in  their  hands ; 
the  Austrians,  despite  considerable  numerical  superiority,  had 
suffered  a  loss  of  10,000  men,  and  the  communications  between 
Vorarlberg  and  Southern  Tyrol  were  cut. 

On  the  flanks,  however,  fortune  had  been  very  different. 
Archduke  Charles,  whose  headquarters  were  at  the  moment 
at  Friedberg,  was  better  prepared  for  attack  than  was  Bellegarde 
in  Tyrol  or  Auffenberg  in  the  Grisons;  and  when  Jourdan, 
in  obedience  to  definite  orders  from  Paris  but  against  his  own 
better  judgment,  advanced  again  and  took  post  behind  the 
Osterach,  the  Archduke,  though  too  late  to  fulfil  his  intention 
of  forestalling  the  French  at  this  river,  had  little  difficulty  in 
forcing  them  to  retreat  (March  21st).  Profiting  by  the  leisurely 
nature  of  the  Austrian  pursuit,  Jourdan  turned  suddenly  to  bay 
at  Stockach,  and  as  the  Austrians  reconnoitred  his  position, 
delivered  a  furious  counter-attack  (March  25th).  His  principal 
effort  was  on  his  left,  where  St.  Cyr,  reinforced  by  d’Hautpoult 
and  Soult,  drove  Merveldt’s  Austrians  back  in  disorder  from 
Liptingen,  while  the  Austrian  centre  and  left  had  the  greatest 
difficulty  in  maintaining  their  position  at  Stockach.  Victory 
seemed  in  Jourdan’s  grasp,  and  he  was  aiming  a  turning 
movement  against  the  enemy’s  line  of  retreat  when,  just  in  time, 
the  Archduke  brought  up  reinforcements  and  quite  turned  the 
tables  by  a  successful  stroke  at  the  French  centre.  His  success 
was  decisive :  the  French  were  driven  back  and  their  line  cut  in 
half ;  and  though  the  Archduke  failed  to  make  the  renewed 


428  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1799 


attack  next  morning  which  might  have  clinched  his  victory, 
Jourdan  fell  back  across  the  Black  Forest  (March  29th  to 
30th)  without  attempting  to  defend  its  passes.  His  army,  ill- 
disciplined  and  ill-provided,  went  completely  to  pieces,  and 
could  have  been  annihilated  had  the  pursuit  been  hotly  pressed. 
Still  even  if  Jourdan  was  lucky  to  escape,  the  Archduke  had 
achieved  no  inconsiderable  success. 

Not  only  was  Jourdan  compelled  to  recross  the  Rhine  in 
order  to  cover  Alsace  against  the  attack  which  was  expected, 
but  Bernadotte,  who  had  advanced  up  the  Neckar,  levying 
contributions  and  plundering  in  the  usual  style,  hastily  fell  back 
also ;  and,  save  for  the  garrisons  of  Kehl  and  Mannheim,  the 
Right  Bank  was  free  from  the  French.  Moreover,  their  forces  in 
Italy  had  also  suffered  disaster.  Scherer,  somewhat  too  old  for 
his  work,  was  less  successful  in  the  field  than  as  a  Minister 
of  War,  and  his  attempt  to  defeat  Kray  before  the  promised 
Russian  reinforcements  could  arrive  ended  in  complete  disaster. 
After  repulsing  the  attacks  of  the  French  between  Legnago 
and  Pastrengo  (March  26th),  and  thwarting  an  effort  they  made 
to  cross  the  Adige  near  Verona,  Kray,  a  Wallachian  of  no  little 
talent,  popular  with  his  men  and  trusted  by  them  if  not  by  the 
little  clique  which  ruled  the  Austrian  War  Council,  took  the 
counter-offensive  with  success.  Only  the  energy  and  skill  of 
Moreau,  Scherers  second  in  command,  saved  the  French  army 
from  complete  ruin  at  Magnano,  just  South  of  Verona  (April  5th). 
Even  so  they  had  to  abandon  the  lines  of  the  Mincio  and  Oglio, 
and  only  about  25,000,  not  half  Scherer’s  original  force,  could  be 
rallied  behind  the  Adda.  Meanwhile  Suvorov  had  arrived  with 
the  first  contingent  of  his  Russians  (April  15th)  and  taken 
command  of  the  Allies. 

The  veteran  Russian  general,  though  nearly  seventy,  was 
full  of  a  youthful  vigour  which  was  conspicuous  by  its  absence 
among  the  slower  and  more  methodical  officers  of  Austria. 
His  enterprise  and  dash,  combined  as  they  were  with  a  power 
of  endurance  and  a  calm  resourcefulness  not  often  met  with  in 
a  nature  so  impetuous,  made  him  resemble  the  generals  of  the 
Revolutionary  school  rather  than  those  brought  up  in  the  more 
precise  traditions  of  Frederick  II  and  Marshal  Lacy.  Keenly  alive 
as  he  was  to  the  importance  of  rapidity,  of  concentrating  his  troops 
to  strike  a  decisive  blow,  he  startled  the  Austrian  generals  as 
much  by  his  proposal  to  push  forward,  leaving  Mantua  untaken 


1799]  RASTATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION  429 


in  his  rear,  as  he  annoyed  them  by  compelling  their  troops  to 
practise  the  bayonet  exercise  all  day.  Nor  was  it  wonderful 
that  he  came  into  collision  with  the  Austrian  War  Council. 
Suvorov  was  not  the  man  to  spare  criticism  where  it  was  as 
well  deserved  as  it  was  by  the  inefficient  administration  of 
Thugut  and  his  clique.  Moreover,  the  Council  actually  went  so 
far  as  to  issue  direct  orders  to  the  Austrian  troops  which  had 
been  placed  under  his  command,  an  interference  he  angrily 
resented.  When  it  is  also  added  that  the  policy  of  Thugut, 
which  included  designs  on  Piedmont  and  Genoa,  differed 
materially  from  that  of  Suvorov  and  his  master  and  led  to 
violent  quarrels,  it  is  not  the  defeats  but  the  successes  of  the 
Allies  that  excite  surprise.  Favourable  as  the  opportunity 
seemed  for  overthrowing  France,  with  her  best  general  locked 
up  in  Egypt,  her  armies  falling  back  defeated  and  in  confusion 
towards  her  frontiers,  pursued  by  the  hatred  of  the  populations 
they  had  maltreated,  her  home  government  discredited  and  a 
prey  to  factions,  it  was  not  by  a  disunited  Coalition  that  her 
defeat  was  to  be  accomplished.  When  Prussia  and  most  of  the 
other  Powers  of  Germany  held  aloof,  and  Austria  and  Russia 
entertained  antagonistic  views  as  to  the  policy  to  be  pursued, 
France  had  not  really  much  to  fear. 

Meanwhile  the  Congress  of  Rastatt  had  been  continuing 
its  sessions.  Long  after  more  than  sufficient  reasons  had  been 
given  for  the  rupture  of  negotiations,  Francis  II  had  clung  to 
the  hopes  of  arranging  a  satisfactory  settlement  at  Rastatt,  and 
the  lesser  members  of  the  Empire  were  too  much  engrossed 
in  the  intrigues  and  bargains  of  the  Congress  to  pay  any  heed  to 
events  in  Italy  or  Switzerland.  Even  after  Austria’s  declaration 
of  war  (March  12th),  only  Lehrbach  and  Metternich  left  the 
Congress.  The  majority  of  the  minor  states  eagerly  accepted 
the  assurance  of  the  French  that  they  would  not  be  molested  un¬ 
less  they  supported  Austria,  for  the  French  never  missed  a  chance 
of  sowing  dissension  between  the  Emperor  and  the  Empire. 
With  this  object  they  disclosed  the  secret  arrangements  of 
Campo  Formio,  and  the  deliberations  of  the  Congress  were  only 
interrupted  by  the  arrival  of  Austrian  troops,  who  surrounded 
the  town  and  compelled  the  plenipotentiaries  to  disperse,  as  the 
Emperor  had  formally  declared  the  Congress  dissolved.  The 
French  envoys  were  given  passports  ordering  them  to  quit 
Rastatt  within  twenty-four  hours  (April  28th);  but  delaying 


430  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1799 


their  departure  until  evening,  they  found  the  gates  closed  and 
did  not  get  out  until  10  p.m.  They  had  hardly  left  the  town 
before  they  were  beset  by  a  party  of  Austrian  hussars,  attacked 
and  cut  down ;  two  of  them,  Bonnet  and  Roberjot,  being  killed 
on  the  spot  and  the  third,  de  Bry,  left  for  dead.  The  French 
version  of  the  affair  is  that  it  was  intentional,  that  it  was  done 
by  Thugut’s  orders  to  make  the  breach  with  France  insuperable, 
or  perhaps  to  destroy  the  evidence  of  Austrian  negotiations 
with  France.  However,  there  seems  no  reason  whatever  for 
laying  the  blame  at  Thugut’s  door.  He  was  much  too  clever  a 
man  to  have  planned  an  act  so  brutal,  so  useless,  and  so 
calculated  to  excite  horror  and  disapproval.1  It  seems  rather 
more  probable  that  the  military  authorities,  well  aware  that  the 
French  had  abused  their  ambassadorial  office  for  purposes  of 
espionage,  intended  to  seize  their  papers,  though  no  personal 
injury  to  the  Ambassadors  was  contemplated,2  but  that  the 
officer  entrusted  with  the  affair  misinterpreted  and  exceeded 
his  instructions  with  disastrous  results.3  It  is,  of  course, 
possible  that  the  outrage  may  have  been  the  work  of  French 
emigres  in  the  Austrian  service;4  but  the  evidence  is  on  the 
whole  unfavourable  to  this  theory,  though  the  Austrians 
endeavoured  to  get  it  accepted.  Whatever  explanation  be 
accepted,  the  incident  was  most  discreditable  to  Austria,  and 
Thugut  would  have  done  more  to  clear  himself  of  the  suspicion 
of  complicity  had  more  been  done  to  punish  the  authors  of 
an  outrage  worthy  of  the  worst  days  of  Revolutionary  excess. 

One  result  of  the  Allied  successes  in  Italy  and  on  the 
Danube  was  that  the  French  were  unable  to  retain  their 
advanced  position  in  Tyrol.  Lecourbe  had  to  fall  back  to 
Chur,  and  Dessolles  to  follow  suit.  Chiavenna  was  evacuated ; 
Loison  failed  to  maintain  his  position  in  the  Valtelline  and  had 
to  retire  by  the  Spliigen  Pass  into  the  Rhine  valley ;  and  Hotze 
carrying  the  Luciensteg  (May  14th)  at  a  second  attempt,  the 
French  were  expelled  from  Eastern  Switzerland.  Greater 
successes  might  have  been  obtained  but  for  the  highly  culpable 
slackness  of  Bellegarde  ;5  and,  moreover,  when  the  Grisons  had 
been  cleared  of  the  French  he  refused  to  push  on  to  the 
St.  Gotthard  and  seize  that  pass,  though  this  would  enable  him 
to  cut  off  the  retreat  of  the  French  divisions  from  the  Italian 


1  Cf.  Dcr  Krieg  von  1799,  ch.  iii.  passim. 
3  Ibid.  i.  p.  96.  4  Ibid.  i.  p.  72. 


2  Ibid.  i.  p.  79. 

5  Ibid f  i.  pp.  57-60, 


1799]  HAST  ATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION  431 


lakes,  but  took  instead  the  road  to  Italy  by  the  Spliigen  and 
Como,  alleging  that  his  instructions  bade  him  reinforce  Suvorov. 
Even  more  unfortunate  was  it  that  during  this  period  the 
Archduke  should  not  merely  have  done  nothing  to  follow  up 
his  successes  against  Jourdan,  but  made  no  move  against 
Massena  either.  Switzerland  after  her  bitter  experiences  as 
one  of  the  daughter  Republics  with  which  France  had 
surrounded  herself,  would  have  welcomed  the  once-hated 
Austrians  as  deliverers.  Massena  with  barely  30,000  men  in 
the  midst  of  a  hostile  population  could  hardly  have  hoped  to 
maintain  his  position  against  Hotze’s  20,000,  together  with  the 
40,000  troops  of  whom  the  Archduke  could  have  disposed,  even 
if  some  portions  of  the  Austrian  force  must  have  been  left  to 
watch  Jourdan.  To  a  certain  extent  this  inaction  was  caused 
by  Bellegarde’s  defeats,  and  the  Archduke’s  own  health  was  so 
bad  that  for  several  weeks  he  was  unable  to  discharge  his  duties. 
He  himself  attributed  his  inactivity  to  the  insufficiency  of  his 
force  and  to  the  deficiencies  in  his  equipment  and  supplies — in 
other  words,  to  the  bad  administration  of  the  War  Council ;  but 
the  principal  reason 1  was  the  resolve  of  the  Emperor  and 
Thugut,  influenced  not  a  little  by  political  considerations,  to 
wait  for  the  arrival  of  the  large  Russian  reinforcements  which 
were  on  their  way.  The  Archduke  himself  would  have  resumed 
operations  about  the  middle  of  April,  but  orders  from  Vienna 
held  him  back.2  The  time  thus  lost  by  the  Allies  was  of 
incalculable  value  to  France.  Massena  spared  no  effort  to 
improve  his  position  and  to  reorganise  and  refit  his  troops,  and 
to  repress  the  tentative  efforts  of  the  Swiss  to  rise  and  free 
themselves  from  the  yoke  of  the  invaders ;  while  Bernadotte, 
transferred  to  the  Ministry  of  War,  exhibited  wonderful  energy 
and  great  administrative  capacity  in  getting  together  a  new 
army  100,000  strong  out  of  the  new  levies  whom  the  law 
of  the  Conscription  (Sept.  23rd,  1798)  had  placed  at  his 
disposal. 

Not  until  the  end  of  May  were  hostilities  resumed.  Even 
then  the  efforts  of  the  Austrian  main  army  were  designed  mainly 
to  assist  Hotze’s  operations  in  Eastern  Switzerland.  The 
Archduke  advanced  South  against  Massena’s  positions  in  the 
district  between  the  Thur,  the  Glatt  and  the  Limmat,  Hotze 
moving  East  from  St.  Gallen  to  co-operate  with  him.  Dashing 

1  Cf.  Der  Krug  von  7799,  i.  p.  107,  2  Ibid.  p.  109. 


432  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1799 


at  the  Archduke,  who  had  crossed  the  Rhine  near  Schaffhausen 
on  May  23rd,  Massena  was  repulsed  (May  25th)  after  heavy 
fighting,  and  the  Austrians  were  able  to  unite  and  to  force  the 
French  steadily  back  on  Zurich  (May  27th  to  29th).  To  hold  this 
town,  important  as  the  point  on  which  many  roads  converged, 
Massena  took  up  a  strong  position  stretching  North-Westward 
from  the  lake  to  the  Glatt.  Here  on  June  4th  he  gave  battle 
to  the  Archduke.  On  their  left  the  Austrian  columns  penetrated 
to  the  suburbs  of  Zurich,  but  were  there  checked ;  in  the  centre 
neither  the  column  which  assailed  the  Zurich  Berg  nor  that 
under  Hotze  which  tried  to  storm  the  Geisberg  was  able  to  gain 
any  decisive  advantage ;  while  an  equally  indecisive  result  was 
reached  on  the  right  wing  in  the  direction  of  Afholtern.  But 
Massena  saw  that  he  would  not  be  able  to  hold  his  own  against 
the  renewed  attack  which  the  Archduke  was  preparing,  and 
accordingly  he  evacuated  Zurich  and  retired  to  a  strong  position 
behind  the  Lower  Reuss.  Meanwhile  Lecourbe,  who  was 
endeavouring  to  hold  the  St.  Gotthard  against  Bellegarde,  had 
been  forced  back  to  Altorf  at  the  head  of  the  Lake  of  Lucerne 
and  the  shortest  line  of  communications  between  the  German 
and  Italian  theatres  of  war  was  once  more  in  Austrian  hands. 
Had  the  Archduke  only  pushed  forward  the  Austrians  might 
have  gained  a  real  success  ;  they  were  superior  in  numbers,  and 
the  population  of  Eastern  Switzerland  was  strongly  in  their 
favour.  But  once  again  political  complications  proved  fatal  to 
the  cause  of  the  Coalition.  Thugut  was  very  anxious  to  get 
Suvorov  out  of  Italy,  lest  the  Russian  general  should  interfere 
with  his  schemes  for  the  disposal  of  the  territory  reconquered 
from  the  French.  While  Russia  looked  upon  the  restoration 
to  Charles  Emmanuel  of  the  mainland  possessions  of  the 
House  of  Savoy  as  one  of  the  principal  objects  of  the  Coali¬ 
tion,  Thugut  had  other  designs  for  Piedmont,  alleging  that 
only  if  it  were  in  Austria’s  hands  could  it  be  made  a  satisfac¬ 
tory  bulwark  against  French  aggression,  and  assuming  that 
Charles  Emmanuel  had  forfeited  all  claims  upon  the  Allies 
by  deserting  them  in  1796.  Accordingly  he  readily  agreed  to 
a  scheme  which  the  English  ministry  put  forward  with  the 
Czar’s  consent,  by  which  Suvorov  was  to  come  up  from  Italy 
with  his  Russian  corps,  unite  with  the  Archduke  and  with  a 
Russian  corps  under  Korsakov,  now  on  its  way  to  Switzerland, 
and  advance  into  France.  Suvorov  was  not  ill-disposed  to  this 


1799]  RASTATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION  433 


scheme.  Considerable  as  were  the  successes  he  had  gained  in 
Italy,  he  found  himself  continually  thwarted  by  the  interference 
of  the  Austrian  War  Council ;  the  Emperor  insisted  on  treating 
him  as  though  completely  at  his  disposal,  and  his  plans  were 
constantly  upset  and  altered  by  Thugut.  The  refusal  of  the 
Austrians  to  co-operate  in  an  invasion  of  Provence,  since  they 
wished  to  complete  the  conquest  of  Italy,  increased  Suvorov’s 
desire  to  turn  North  and  join  Korsakov  in  Switzerland. 

During  the  five  months  which  had  elapsed  since  he  had 
taken  over  the  command  of  the  Allied  forces  in  Italy,  Suvorov 
had  achieved  much.  He  had  begun  by  capturing  Brescia  (April 
2 1st)  and  Cremona,  and  forcing  the  passage  of  the  Adda  behind 
which  the  French,  encouraged  by  the  substitution  of  Moreau 
for  the  discredited  Scherer,  had  attempted  a  stand.  But  not 
even  Moreau  could  stem  Suvorov’s  advance.  The  Austrians 
of  Ott’s  division  forced  their  way  across  the  river  by  Cassano 
(April  27th),  and  the  advantage  was  pressed  home.  Moreau, 
his  centre  thus  pierced,  was  thrust  back  Southward,  and 
completely  severed  from  his  left  under  S^rurier  higher  up  the 
river.  The  confused  retreat  of  the  French  resulted  in  the 
capture  of  Serurier  and  the  bulk  of  his  division,  and  on 
April  29th  the  Russian  general  entered  Milan.  Luckily  for 
Moreau,  however,  Suvorov  abandoned  his  first  intention  of 
following  hard  after  the  French  and  cutting  them  off  from 
Genoa,  to  turn  aside  into  Piedmont  where  the  population 
welcomed  him  as  a  deliverer.  On  May  25th  he  was  before 
Turin,  which  opened  its  gates  to  him  two  days  later.  Mean¬ 
while  Moreau  fell  back  across  the  Apennines  towards  Genoa, 
not  a  little  fortunate  in  that  he  escaped  the  pursuit  which  must 
have  ruined  the  remnants  of  his  army.  Arrived  at  Genoa 
(June  6th),  he  covered  his  communications  with  PVance  and 
held  out  a  hand  to  Macdonald,  who  after  collecting  from 
Tuscany,  Rome  and  Naples  the  various  divisions  of  the 
French  army  in  those  quarters,  some  36,000  in  all,  had 
abandoned  Southern  Italy  to  its  fate  and  was  coming  up  the 
Via  Aimiliana  towards  Piacenza,  a  march  which  seemed  to 
threaten  an  attack  on  the  left  flank  and  communications  of 
the  Allies. 

The  situation  of  the  Allies  was  one  of  no  small  peril. 
They  were  so  much  scattered  that  the  main  body  was  little 

over  20,000  strong;  but  Suvorov  rose  to  the  occasion,  Con- 
28 


434  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1799 


centrating  some  36,000  troops  at  Alessandria  (June  12th),  he 
set  off  Eastward  on  the  15th;  and  so  rapid  were  his  movements, 
that  as  Macdonald  was  forcing  back  Ott’s  Austrians  from  the 
Trebbia  to  the  Tidone  (June  17th),  Suvorov’s  vanguard  suddenly 
planted  itself  across  his  path  and  checked  the  French  advance. 
A  fierce  struggle  was  ended  about  3  p.m.  by  the  arrival  of 
the  Allied  main  body,  headed  by  the  Russian  veteran  in  person. 
Two  more  days  of  desperate  and  strenuous  fighting  on  the 
banks  of  the  Trebbia  followed.  In  vain  Macdonald  sought 
to  cut  his  way  through  to  Tortona,  the  place  appointed  for 
his  junction  with  Moreau.  So  stubborn  was  the  resistance 
of  Russians  and  Austrians  alike,  that  at  the  end  of  the  third 
day  (June  21st)  the  French  army,  broken  and  demoralised, 
began  a  disorderly  but  unmolested  retreat  across  the  Apennines 
into  Tuscany.  But  that  Suvorov  had  to  dash  back  to  Tortona 
to  succour  Bellegarde,  the  lieutenant  he  had  left  behind  to 
keep  Moreau  in  check,  and  was  therefore  unable  to  pursue, 
things  might  have  gone  very  ill  with  Macdonald.  As  it  was, 
he  managed  to  extricate  himself  from  a  perilous  position  by 
making  his  way  over  indifferent  roads  to  the  Riviera,  thus 
regaining  touch  with  Moreau,  who  had  fallen  back  from  Tortona 
(June  25th)  the  moment  Suvorov  drew  near. 

But  though  the  Allies  had  an  excellent  chance  of  expel¬ 
ling  the  French  from  Italy,  they  failed  to  improve  the  occasion. 
As  in  1793,  the  victorious  field  army  was  dispersed  to  besiege 
Mantua  and  other  fortresses,  the  direct  interference  of  the 
Austrian  War  Council  thus  wrecking  Suvorov’s  plans  when 
they  seemed  on  the  point  of  success.  Clearly  as  Suvorov 
realised  that  if  Moreau  were  once  beaten  out  of  Italy  the 
fate  of  the  garrisons  he  had  left  behind  would  be  sealed,  he 
could  not  collect  his  forces  for  the  pitched  battle  which  alone 
could  give  decisive  victory  till  July  had  been  frittered  away 
in  sieges  of  minor  importance,  and  the  Directory  had  been 
able  to  send  Joubert  with  large  reinforcements  to  take  command 
of  the  Army  of  Italy.  Not  till  August  5th,  however,  was  the 
new  commander  free  to  start  to  the  relief  of  the  beleaguered 
fortresses,  and  by  that  time  both  Alessandria  (July  21st)  and 
Mantua  (July  29th)  had  fallen,  and  the  besieging  forces  were 
on  their  way  to  rejoin  Suvorov.  Thus  Joubert’s  advance 
ended  in  disaster.  Near  Novi  he  found  his  way  barred  by 
Suvorov  with  superior  forces  (Aug.  14th),  and  only  after  some 


1799]  RASTATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION  435 


hesitation  did  he  decide  to  stand  and  fight.  Next  day  the 
battle  was  begun  by  an  advance  of  Kray’s  Austrians  on  the 
Allied  right,  and  Joubert  hurrying  to  the  spot  was  hit  and 
killed.  Moreau  succeeded  to  the  command,  and  by  supreme 
exertions  held  his  ground  against  the  repeated  attacks  of  Kray 
of  the  Russians  in  the  centre.  But  with  the  afternoon  there 
arrived  on  the  scene  a  fresh  division  of  Austrians  under  Melas, 
and  their  intervention — a  direct  attack  on  the  French  right 
at  Novi  combined  with  an  outflanking  movement  more  to 
the  Southward — decided  the  sixteen  hours’  struggle  in  favour 
of  the  Allies.  In  complete  disorder  the  French  fell  back  on 
Genoa.  Want  of  transport  prevented  an  immediate  pursuit 
by  the  Allies.  Tortona  was  still  untaken,  and  the  Austrian 
corps  of  Klenau  was  detached  into  Tuscany  by  the  War 
Council  instead  of  supporting  Suvorov.  Accordingly  the 
Russian  general  determined  to  transfer  himself  to  Switzerland, 
and  about  the  middle  of  September  his  columns  began  to  make 
their  way  past  Bellinzona  up  the  Leventina  valley  towards 
the  St.  Gotthard. 

The  diversion  of  Suvorov’s  corps  from  Italy  to  Switzerland 
was  not  in  itself  a  mistaken  move.  Had  Archduke  Charles 
remained  on  the  Limmat  holding  Massena  in  check,  the 
appearance  of  the  Russian  veteran  on  the  St.  Gotthard  in 
the  French  general’s  right  rear  would  have  seriously  endangered 
his  position.  But  the  Archduke  with  36,000  of  his  60,000  men 
had  moved  away  down  the  Rhine  long  before  Suvorov  arrived. 
He  was  well  aware  of  the  danger  of  leaving  Hotze  and 
Korsakov  with  little  over  50,000  men  to  face  the  80,000  men 
now  under  Massena,  but  he  had  not  the  moral  courage  or 
the  resolution  to  defy  Thugut  and  refuse  to  carry  out  the 
task  allotted  to  him.  There  was  some  idea  that  by  attacking 
Alsace  he  would  materially  assist  the  efforts  of  the  Anglo- 
Russian  expedition  to  North  Holland,  which  had  just  (Aug. 
27th)  effected  a  successful  landing  at  the  Helder :  possibly 
Thugut  was  anxious  to  have  Austrian  troops  in  close  proximity 
to  the  Netherlands  in  case  the  efforts  of  England  and  Russia 
should  induce  Prussia  to  throw  in  her  lot  with  the  Allies  ;  always 
jealous  of  Prussia,  he  may  have  desired  to  be  able  to  prevent 
her  making  acquisitions  on  the  Lower  Rhine.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  the  Archduke’s  operations  had  no  influence  whatever 
over  the  fighting  along  the  Zuyder  Zee ;  and  though  he  managed 


436  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1799 


to  relieve  Philipsburg,  on  which  the  French  were  pressing  closely 
(Sept.  1 2th),  and  stormed  their  position  at  Mannheim  with 
complete  success,  the  operations  of  his  36,000  men  had 
practically  no  effective  influence  over  the  results  of  the 
campaign.  Though  there  was  a  good  deal  of  spasmodic 
fighting  going  on  along  the  Rhine,  the  French  making  raids, 
the  peasantry  supported  by  small  parties  of  regulars  resist¬ 
ing  with  fair  success,  it  was  of  quite  minor  importance. 
Albini,  the  chief  minister  of  the  Elector  of  Mayence,  had 
taken  advantage  of  these  efforts  of  the  peasantry  to  organise 
their  resistance,  his  example  had  been  imitated  elsewhere,  and 
fair  success  had  been  achieved,  so  that  the  Archduke  was  not 
wanted  on  the  Neckar  and  his  presence  was  badly  needed  on 
the  Limmat.1 

Massena  was  not  the  man  to  neglect  such  a  chance  as 
the  Archduke’s  departure  gave  him.  Already,  during  the 
middle  of  August,  Lecourbe  had  resumed  the  offensive  against 
the  Austrian  left  in  the  valleys  of  the  Upper  Reuss  and  Upper 
Rhone.  He  had  managed  to  regain  possession  of  the  Simplon 
and  St.  Gotthard  passes,  and  thus,  when  Suvorov  came  up 
from  Bellinzona  he  found  the  pass  in  possession  of  the  enemy. 
Between  the  19th  and  the  26th  of  September  the  fate  of  the 
campaign  was  decided.  After  a  series  of  desperate  struggles 
in  which  every  step  of  the  way  was  fiercely  contested,  Suvorov 
forced  his  way  over  the  St.  Gotthard  to  the  Devil’s  Bridge 
and  over  the  Devil’s  Bridge  (Sept.  24th)  to  Altdorf  at  the 
head  of  the  Lake  of  Lucerne  (26th).  Thence  he  turned  East, 
pushed  through  the  Schachenthal  (Sept.  27th)  and  over  the 
Kinzig  Kulm  into  the  valley  of  the  Muotta  (29th),  to  find 
in  his  front  at  Schwytz,  not  Korsakov,  whom  he  hoped  to  meet, 
but  Massena.  For  while  Suvorov  was  struggling  over  the 
St.  Gotthard,  Massena  had  concentrated  40,000  men  round 
Zurich,  had  crossed  the  Limmat,  and  hurled  Mortier’s  corps  on 
Korsakov’s  front  while  Oudinot  outflanked  him  and  threatened 
his  retreat.  Two  days’  hard  fighting  ended  in  the  complete 
defeat  of  the  Russian  army  (Sept.  25th  to  26th),  the  relics 

1  The  Archduke  wanted  to  use  Albini’s  organisation  to  found  a  permanent 
Landsturm  in  South  Germany.  The  chance  was  fair ;  for,  if  one  may  judge  its 
quality  by  the  verbal  expressions  it  found,  there  was  a  very  violent  anti-French 
feeling  in  South  Germany,  and  the  Franconian  and  Swabian  Circles,  Bavaria, 
Wtirtemberg  and  other  Powers  were  raising  contingents.  However,  such  a  step 
was  entirely  opposed  to  Thugut’s  policy,  and  nothing  came  of  the  idea. 


1799]  RASTATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION  437 


of  which  only  escaped  having  to  surrender  by  a  prodigious 
effort  which  carried  them  through  the  encircling  French. 
Simultaneously  Soult  had  forced  the  passage  of  the  Linth, 
defeated  and  killed  Hotze,  and  driven  the  left  wing  of 
the  Austro-Russian  army  back  into  the  Vorarlberg  by 
St.  Gall. 

Thus  Suvorov  found  that  all  his  efforts  had  been  in  vain. 
His  feat  in  extricating  his  16,000  exhausted  men  from  their 
perilous  position  and  bringing  them  in  safety  to  the  right 
bank  of  the  Upper  Rhine  was  the  supreme  achievement  of 
his  career ;  but  Switzerland  was  none  the  less  lost,  for  the 
relics  of  Korsakov’s  forces  had  put  the  Rhine  and  the  Lake 
of  Constance  between  them  and  the  victorious  Massena. 

Thus  the  campaign  of  1799  had  ended  in  defeat  and 
disappointment  for  the  Coalition.  In  Italy,  Liguria  alone 
was  left  to  the  French,  for  Championnet’s  attempt  to  profit 
by  Suvorov’s  departure  to  recover  possession  of  Piedmont 
had  resulted  in  the  defeat  of  the  Army  of  Italy  by  Melas 
near  Genoa  (Nov.  4th).  Similarly  the  right  bank  of  the  Rhine 
was  clear  of  all  but  raiding  parties  of  French ;  but  Switzerland 
was  again  in  their  possession,  and  the  next  campaign  was  to 
show  how  great  was  the  strategic  advantage  they  were  to 
derive  from  this.  Moreover,  failure  had  attended  the  Anglo- 
Russian  campaign  in  Holland.  Not  really  beaten  in  the  field, 
the  Duke  of  York  had  found  it  impossible  to  advance  in  a 
country  so  much  cut  up  by  canals  and  marshes  with  an  army 
largely  composed  of  raw  recruits  from  the  Militia,  and  with 
Allies  as  unsatisfactory  and  untrustworthy  as  Hermann  and 
his  Russians.  Moreover,  the  expedition  had  been  misdirected 
from  the  first.  When  it  was  first  proposed,  it  had  been  expected 
that  Prussia  would  join  the  Coalition,  in  which  case  the  true 
policy  would  have  been  to  land  the  troops  on  the  East  of 
the  Zuyder  Zee,  in  Groningen  and  Friesland,  the  strongholds 
of  the  Orange  party,  not  in  North  Holland,  the  most  Republican 
part  of  the  whole  country.  In  Groningen  the  Allies  would 
have  been  in  a  friendly  country  and  in  easy  communication 
with  Flanover ;  and  if  at  the  same  time  a  Prussian  army  had 
crossed  the  Rhine  to  recover  Cleves  and  Guelders,  the  chances 
of  the  Coalition  would  have  been  enormously  improved.  At 
the  root,  then,  of  the  failure  in  North  Holland  was  Prussia’s 
selfish,  shortsighted  and  most  reprehensible  neutrality.  Her 


438  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1799 


refusal  to  join  caused  the  expedition  to  be  hurried  to  sea 
without  any  definite  aim  in  order  to  do  something,  and  to  this 
want  of  definite  purpose  may  be  attributed  the  failure.1 

With  Austria  and  Russia  on  decidedly  strained  terms,  and 
the  relations  between  Russia  and  England  not  much  better,  the 
fortunes  of  the  Coalition  were  already  on  the  wane,  even  before 
the  return  of  Bonaparte  to  France  (Oct.)  and  the  improve¬ 
ment  in  her  military  effectiveness  involved  in  the  establishment 
of  the  firm  and  centralised  government  of  the  Consulate  on 
the  ruins  of  the  Directory  (Nov.  1799).  Indeed,  the  Coalition 
was  on  the  point  of  dissolving.  The  exchange  of  projects  for 
the  next  campaign  only  brought  Austria  and  Russia  into  more 
violent  conflict.  On  October  22nd,  Paul  announced  his  seces¬ 
sion  from  the  Coalition ;  in  December  the  Russian  troops 
started  homeward.  This  destroyed  the  last  chance  of  inducing 
Prussia  to  join  the  Allies.  Earlier  in  the  year,  Russia  had  put 
strong  pressure  on  her  to  join.  There  were  not  wanting  men 
who  proclaimed  the  unwisdom  of  the  policy  of  neutrality. 
Brunswick  was  among  them ;  and  Haugwitz,  now  realising  the 
dangers  of  French  predominance  in  Europe,  went  so  far  as  to 
explain  to  Otto,  the  French  Minister  at  Berlin,  that  it  had  not 
been  Prussia’s  idea,  when  agreeing  to  the  Peace  of  Basel,  that 
Holland  should  remain  permanently  in  the  occupation  of 
France.  But  Frederick  William  was  not  to  be  persuaded  to 
change  his  policy,  and  France  procrastinated  and  put  off  answer¬ 
ing  until  the  critical  moment  was  past.  Nor  did  the  rest  of 
Germany  show  much  more  forwardness  in  the  common  cause. 
When  the  Diet  met,  Sweden  urged  that  the  Empire  should  take 
part  in  the  war  ;  but  though  the  breaking  off  of  the  Congress  at 
Rastatt  had  left  the  Empire  at  war  with  France,  there  were  the 
usual  unending  delays  about  the  voting  of  supplies  or  con¬ 
tingents,  the  usual  forms  and  ceremonies,  and  the  vote  of 
100  Roman  months,  which  the  Diet  finally  passed,  was  not 
ratified  till  October  31st  when  the  campaign  was  over.  Indeed, 
it  is  not  a  little  remarkable  to  find  that,  despite  all  Austria’s 
efforts  to  rouse  the  German  Princes  to  take  part  in  the  struggle 
against  the  aggressions  of  the  intrusive  foreigner,  Bavaria  was 
the  only  one  of  the  minor  states  to  display  any  keenness. 

1  Cf.  Dunfermline’s  Life  of  Sir  Ralph  Abercromby ,  especially  pp.  141-159; 
Bunbury’s  Narrative  of  the  Campaign  in  North  Holland ;  and  W,  0,  Original 
Corrcspondetice  (Public  Record  Office),  vols.  62-65. 


1799]  RASTATT  AND  THE  SECOND  COALITION  439 


Maximilian  Joseph’s  zeal  can  hardly  have  been  to  the  liking 
of  Thugut.  The  Austrian  minister  would  have  rather  seen  the 
Elector  adopt  a  line  which  would  have  borne  out  the  charges  of 
Francophil  tendencies  which  had  been  brought  against  him. 
He  had  hoped  to  be  able  to  denounce  Maximilian  to  the  Czar 
as  a  traitor  to  the  Empire,  and  with  the  Czar’s  consent  to  have 
deposed  him  and  carried  out  that  annexation  of  the  Wittelsbach 
lands  to  the  Hapsburg  dominions  after  which  he  so  hankered. 
But  this  was  impossible  when  Maximilian’s  ardour  disarmed  all 
hostility,  and  when  he  concluded  a  treaty  in  October  1799  by 
which  he  promised  in  return  for  a  British  subsidy  to  put 
20,000  men  into  the  field. 


CHAPTER  XXII 


MARENGO,  HOHENLINDEN  AND  LUNEVILLE 

AFTER  the  failures  in  Holland  and  Switzerland,  and  the 
consequent  estrangement  between  Russia  and  her  allies, 
the  prospects  of  the  Coalition  for  the  year  1800  were  not  of  the 
brightest.  Nevertheless,  when  Bonaparte,  with  a  great  parade 
of  his  desire  for  peace,  offered  Austria  the  same  terms  which 
she  had  obtained  at  Campo  Formio,  she  rejected  them  without 
much  hesitation.  When  there  was  hardly  a  Frenchman  on  the 
right  of  the  Rhine,  and  when  the  forces  of  the  Republic  seemed 
on  the  point  of  being  expelled  from  Italy,  it  was  the  height  of 
presumption  and  arrogance  to  offer  terms  Austria  had  reluc¬ 
tantly  accepted  when  Bonaparte  was  at  Leoben  and  Hoche  at 
Wetzlar.  Her  achievements  in  1799  might  not  unreasonably 
have  increased  her  confidence  in  her  own  military  prowess,  and, 
moreover,  Great  Britain  had  not  only  arranged  subsidy-treaties 
with  Bavaria,  Mayence  and  Wtirtemberg  for  12,000,  3200  and 
3200  men  respectively,  but  was  proposing  to  take  an  active  part 
in  the  continental  war.  The  expedition  to  North  Holland  had 
at  least  shown  that  she  was  at  last  coming  into  possession  of  a 
respectable  military  force,  the  want  of  which  had  hampered  her 
so  fatally  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  and  the  scheme  of  Sir 
Charles  Stuart  for  a  descent  on  the  Riviera  by  15,000  British 
was  one  which  offered  great  possibilities.1  The  troops  existed, 
and  had  the  British  administration  been  equal  to  despatching 
to  the  Mediterranean  in  February  1800  the  force  which  it  col¬ 
lected  off  Cadiz  in  October,  the  fall  of  Genoa  might  have  been 
hastened  by  some  weeks,  and  Massena’s  gallant  resistance  might 
not  have  given  Napoleon  the  chance  he  used  so  well.  As  it 
was,  the  government  accepted  the  plan,  but  failed  to  act  with 
the  required  promptitude :  long  before  the  expedition  could 
arrive,  the  fate  of  the  campaign  had  been  decided. 

The  Austrian  plan  comprised  a  vigorous  offensive  in  Italy  as 
1  Cf.  Bunbury,  Some  Passages  in  the  War  with  France ,  pp.  57-78, 

440 


i8oo]  MARENGO,  HOHENLINDEN  AND  LUNEVILLE  441 


the  prelude  to  an  invasion  of  the  South  of  France,  while  on 
the  Rhine  Kray  was  to  maintain  a  defensive  attitude.  The 
fatal  defect  in  this  scheme,  however,  was  that  the  possession  of 
Switzerland  enabled  the  French  to  attack  either  portion  of  the 
Austrian  forces  in  flank,  and  the  concentration  of  the  Army  of 
Reserve  at  Dijon  put  into  Bonaparte’s  hands  a  formidable  weapon, 
equally  available  for  employment  in  Germany  or  in  Italy.  His 
original  idea  was  to  unite  with  Moreau  and  strike  from  Schaff- 
hausen  at  Kray’s  left  flank  and  rear,  and  by  placing  the  French 
army  on  his  line  of  communications,  to  cut  him  off  from  Vienna 
and  leave  him  “  in  the  air.”  But  seeing  that  Moreau  was  unlikely 
to  prove  a  satisfactory  colleague,  Bonaparte  changed  his  plan  ; 
he  resolved  to  transfer  the  Army  of  Reserve  1  to  Italy,  where,  at 
the  beginning  of  April,  Massena  (40,000  men)  was  standing  on 
the  defensive  along  the  Riviera,  covering  Genoa  against  Melas. 
With  his  usual  keen  appreciation  of  the  strategical  situation, 
Bonaparte  saw  that  a  descent  from  Switzerland  upon  Turin  or 
Milan  would  place  him  in  a  commanding  position  on  the 
Austrian  line  of  communications  with  Tyrol,  if  only  Massena 
could  hold  out  long  enough  and  keep  Melas  occupied  while 
the  Army  of  Reserve  crossed  the  Alps.  Melas  meanwhile 
had  put  his  60,000  available  men  in  motion  early  in  April. 
By  the  19th,  Massena’s  line  had  been  pierced,  his  left  under 
Suchet,  10,000  strong,  had  been  driven  back  across  the  Var  by 
Melas  with  28,000 ;  he  himself  with  28,000  men,  over  half  of 
them  sick  and  wounded,  had  been  cooped  up  in  Genoa,  to 
which  Ott  (24,000)  laid  siege  (April  21st).  Early  in  May  the 
Army  of  Reserve  started  on  its  way  to  the  Great  St.  Bernhard. 
On  May  15th  the  passage  began;  on  the  20th  Ivrea  in  the 
valley  of  the  Dora  Baltea  was  occupied  by  the  advance-guard 
under  Lannes.  A  week  later,  Bonaparte,  while  feinting  with  his 
right  at  Turin,  was  pushing  Eastward  over  the  Sesia,  the 
Agogna  and  the  Ticino  on  Milan.  This  daring  stroke  had 
completely  changed  the  situation.  But,  while  it  is  unfair  to 
represent  Melas  as  having  been  surprised  by  Bonaparte’s 
irruption  into  the  valley  of  the  Po,2  for  it  is  clear  that  as  far 
back  as  May  1st  he  was  expecting  such  a  move,  he  cannot 
escape  the  responsibility  for  the  negligence  which  left  scattered 
and  unconcentrated  the  30,000  Austrians  in  Piedmont.3  Had 

1  Cf.  Hermann,  Marengo,  pp.  83  ff.  2  Cf.  ibid.  p.  106. 

3  Ibid.  p.  no, 


442  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1800 

they  been  collected  in  good  time,  they  might  have  prevented 
the  French  from  debouching  from  the  passes ;  as  it  was,  they 
were  swept  away  before  Bonaparte’s  advance.  On  the  1st  of 
June,  the  French  forced  the  passage  of  the  Ticino  at  Turbigo 
and  occupied  Milan.  The  next  week  saw  them  secure  the 
passages  of  the  Po  from  Pavia  to  Piacenza,  while  15,000  men 
under  Moncey,  detached  from  the  Army  of  Germany  by 
Bonaparte’s  orders,  came  down  over  the  Simplon  and  the 
St.  Gotthard  (May  26th  to  27th)  to  Milan.  This  reinforcement 
had  been  set  free  by  Moreau’s  successes  against  Kray  in  the 
Danube  valley,  which  had  driven  the  Austrian  Army  of 
Germany  in  behind  the  Iller. 

Meanwhile  Melas  was  at  last  concentrating  his  forces  at 
Alessandria.  It  would  have  been  wiser  to  have  raised  the 
siege  of  Genoa  and  hurried  North  with  every  available  man 
directly  he  heard  the  first  news  of  Bonaparte’s  movement.  But 
he  was  expecting  to  be  attacked  from  the  Var,  and  his  forces 
were  so  much  scattered,  and  moved  so  slowly,  that  he  could  not 
even  attempt  to  defend  the  passage  of  the  Po.  His  position 
was  perilous,  but  by  no  means  hopeless  ;  for  Bonaparte,  departing 
from  the  sound  strategy  of  concentration  of  which  he  was  as  a 
rule  the  truest  prophet,  had  thrust  out  divisions  far  to  the  East 
to  chase  the  Austrian  garrison  of  Milan  behind  the  Oglio,  and 
had  barely  30,000  men  at  hand.  By  this  time  Melas  could 
dispose  of  the  besiegers  of  Genoa,  for  on  June  4th  Massena’s 
heroic  defence  had  come  to  an  end,  not  before  it  had  enabled 
Bonaparte  to  carry  out  his  brilliant  plan  and  to  place  him¬ 
self  in  a  situation  of  overwhelming  strategic  advantage.  Ott 
moved  up  from  Genoa  by  Novi  and  Voghera,  intending  to 
seize  Piacenza  and  so  recover  a  line  of  communication  with 
Tyrol;  but  on  June  9th  he  encountered  Lannes  and  the 
French  advanced  guard  near  Montebello,  and  was  driven  back 
on  Alessandria  with  the  loss  of  4000  men.  Bonaparte,  anxious 
to  put  the  finishing  touch  to  his  strategic  success  by  victory  in 
a  pitched  battle,  had  crossed  the  Po  on  the  8th,  intending  to 
bring  Melas  to  action,  and  now  pushed  on  from  Stradella 
towards  Alessandria.  On  the  13th  he  drove  the  Austrian 
outposts  in  from  Marengo  behind  the  Bormida,  and  posted 
Victor  with  two  divisions  at  Marengo  to  bar  Melas’s  route  to 
Pavia.  At  the  same  time,  fearing  that  the  Austrian  general 
might  attempt  to  escape  by  the  Riviera  round  the  French  left, 


1800]  MARENGO,  HOHENLINDEN  AND  LUNEVILLE  443 


he  sent  off  Desaix  with  a  division  to  Novi  to  block  that  route. 
On  the  Northern  bank  of  the  Po  there  were  two  detached 
divisions  on  which  Bonaparte  relied  to  prevent  Melas  breaking 
through  the  net  in  which  he  found  himself. 

This  dispersion  of  his  forces  was  nearly  fatal  to  Bonaparte. 
It  left  him  much  weaker  than  Melas;  and  when  on  the  morning 
of  June  14th  the  Austrians  sallied  out  across  the  Bormida  and 
opened  the  battle  by  falling  on  Victor,  numbers  eventually 
told.  Lannes  hurried  up  to  Victor’s  aid,  and  prolonged  the 
line  on  his  right  in  the  direction  of  Castel  Ceriolo.  The 
Austrians  were  checked,  but  soon  came  on  again.  The  fight 
was  stubbornly  contested,  the  strength  of  the  French  position 
making  up  for  the  Austrian  superiority  in  numbers.  The 
action  had  already  been  in  progress  nearly  three  hours,  when 
Ott  and  the  left  column  of  the  Austrians  wheeled  to  the  right 
after  carrying  Castel  Ceriolo,  thereby  outflanking  Lannes. 
Almost  at  the  same  moment  (1.30  p.m.)  a  renewed  attack 
by  the  Austrian  grenadiers  carried  Marengo.  The  French  fell 
back  in  some  confusion.  Bonaparte  brought  up  fresh  troops 
under  Monnier  and  St.  Cyr,  and  restored  the  position  for  a 
time.  However,  Ott  drove  Monnier  back ;  and  as  the  Austrian 
main  column  pressed  forward,  Victor’s  two  divisions,  which  had 
been  fighting  hard  since  9  a.m.,  fell  into  disorder.  It  was  in 
vain  that  the  Consular  Guard  planted  itself  in  Ott’s  path  ;  it 
also  was  overwhelmed  and  forced  to  retreat  (3.30  p.m.).  The 
fortunes  of  the  day  seemed  to  have  definitely  gone  in  favour  of 
the  Austrians,  and  the  French  retreat  was  rapidly  degenerating 
into  a  rout.  Melas,  worn  out  by  fatigue,  for  he  was  over 
seventy,  and  by  a  slight  wound,  returned  to  Alessandria  in  the 
full  belief  that  the  victory  was  won.  It  was  an  unfortunate 
step,  for  if  the  victory  had  been  won,  the  situation  called 
imperatively  for  an  energetic  and  close  pursuit.  But  the  failure 
to  follow  hard  on  the  heels  of  the  retreating  French  was  typical 
of  the  worst  vices  of  the  Austrian  military  system,  their 
slowness,  formalism  and  pedantry.1  Moreover,  the  greater 
part  of  the  cavalry  had  been  wasted  during  the  action,  and 
barely  2000  horse  were  available.  Even  so,  it  was  inexcusable 
that  the  pursuit  should  have  been  so  leisurely  that  touch  had 
been  quite  lost  with  the  French,  when,  between  5  and  6  p.m., 
Desaix  suddenly  appeared  in  their  front  near  San  Guiliano.  He 

1  Cf.  Hermann,  p,  168, 


444  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1800 


had  been  delayed  in  his  march  on  Novi  by  the  flooding  of  the 
Scrivia,  and  so  received  Bonaparte’s  orders  recalling  him  before  he 
had  gone  too  far  to  be  able  to  reach  the  battlefield  in  time.1  He 
flung  his  division  across  the  path  of  the  Austrians,  advancing 
somewhat  carelessly  in  the  confidence  of  victory  along  the  high 
road.  Marmont,  by  a  great  effort,  collected  eighteen  guns,  and 
his  salvoes  of  case  shot  and  the  musketry  of  Desaix’s  division 
checked  and  staggered  the  Austrian  grenadiers.  But  it  would 
seem  2  that  not  even  this  would  have  proved  decisive  by  itself. 
The  Austrians  rallied,  and  were  coming  on  again 3  when 
Kellermann,  acting  entirely  on  his  own  responsibility,  delivered 
the  decisive  stroke.  He  hurled  his  rallied  cavalry  on  the 
flank  of  their  infantry,  unprotected  for  the  dragoons,  who 
should  have  covered  it,  had  fallen  behind.  The  change  of 
fortune  was  complete.  Surprised  by  this  unexpected  resist¬ 
ance,  the  Austrians  fell  into  disorder.  A  panic  set  in,  their 
cavalry  disgraced  themselves  by  taking  to  flight,  and  in  a 
short  time  the  all  but  victorious  column  was  being  swept  back 
to  Marengo  in  total  rout,  while  Ott  and  the  other  flank  detach¬ 
ments  had  some  difficulty  in  recrossing  the  Bormida  in  safety. 
The  defeat  was  too  much  for  Melas.  Had  he  held  out  in 
Alessandria,  he  might  have  played  the  part  of  Massena  in 
Genoa;  for  if  he  had  lost  10,000  men,  at  least  8000  French 
had  fallen.4  But  his  nerve  was  gone,  his  men  were  demoralised, 
and  the  state  of  the  fortresses  was  such  as  to  make  the  success 
of  resistance  very  doubtful.5  On  June  15th  he  signed  the 
Convention  of  Alessandria,  by  which  he  undertook  to  evacuate 
all  Italy  West  of  the  Adige  and  South  of  the  Po,  with  the 
exception  of  Ancona,  Borgoforte  and  Tuscany.  Thus  at  one 
blow  all  the  conquests  of  1799  were  lost ;  Italy  passed  from 
Hapsburg  under  French  domination,  and  Bonaparte,  mainly 
through  the  lucky  accident  of  Desaix’s  timely  return,  obtained  as 
the  prize  of  his  Pyrrhic  victory  results  quite  out  of  keeping  with 
the  evenly-balanced  fighting.  That  other  alternatives  were 
open  to  Melas  seems  certain.  If  he  did  not  fancy  the  prospects 
of  a  move  to  Genoa,  whence  by  the  aid  of  the  English  fleet  he 


1  Cf.  Hermann,  p.  136.  2  Cf.  ibid.  ch.  vii. 

3  Ibid.  p.  183.  4  Cf.  ibid.  ch.  viii. 

5  For  this  the  blame  must  be  divided  between  the  Austrian  War  Council  and 
Thugut  and  his  protege,  Zach,  the  Austrian  Chief  of  the  Staff :  cf.  a  narrative  of  the 
action  (probably  written  by  Radetzky)  in  Xiuffer,  pp.  352-367. 


1800]  MARENGO,  HOHENLINDEN  AND  LUNEVILLE  445 

might  have  made  his  way  to  Tuscany,  there  seems  good 
reason  to  suppose  that  Bonaparte  could  not  have  checked  him 
had  he  attempted  to  force  his  way  through  the  weak  and 
scattered  French  divisions  on  the  Northern  bank  of  the  Po.1 
So  tame  a  surrender  was  certainly  uncalled  for,  and  indicates 
how  unfit  Melas  was  for  his  command,  and  how  unsound  the 
Austrian  military  system  wjhich  could  allot  such  a  task  to  one 
so  unsuited  for  it,  and  who,  to  do  him  justice,  was  himself  well 
aware  of  his  incapacity.2 

Nor  had  the  campaign  in  Germany  redressed  the  balance 
in  favour  of  Austria.  Whereas  in  previous  years  the  contending 
forces  of  France  and  Austria  had  faced  each  other  on  either 
side  of  the  straight  course  of  the  Rhine  below  Basel  with  the 
neutral  territory  of  Switzerland  covering  their  Southern  flanks, 
the  French  occupation  of  Switzerland  and  their  success  in 
maintaining  their  grip  on  it  in  1799  had  quite  altered  the  situa¬ 
tion.  Their  right  wing  could  be  extended  from  Basel  to  Schaff- 
hausen  so  that  it  outflanked  the  Austrians  along  the  Black 
Poorest,  and  could  take  that  defensive  position  in  rear  by  a 
descent  into  the  Danube  valley  by  Stockach  and  Moeskirch. 
The  Austrians  had  either  to  expose  themselves  to  an  attack 
on  their  communications  by  this  route,  or  if  they  fell  back  to 
the  more  defensible  line  of  the  Iller,  to  abandon  to  the  enemy 
Baden,  Wiirtemberg  and  a  large  part  of  the  Swabian  Circle. 
Of  these  alternatives  Kray  had  chosen  the  former,  hoping  to 
cover  the  large  magazines  which  had  been  collected  at  Engen, 
Stockach  and  other  places,  but  his  100,000  men  were  over 
much  extended.  His  right  stretched  from  the  Main  to  the 
Rench,  and  on  his  left  the  corps  in  the  Vorarlberg  under  the 
Prince  of  Reuss  was  dangerously  far  from  the  main  body  at 
Villingen  and  Donaueschingen.  Moreau,  on  the  other  hand, 
had  the  100,000  men  of  whom  he  could  dispose  concentrated  in 
four  corps  at  Strassburg,  Breisach,  Basel  and  Schaft  hausen. 
Bonaparte  had  urged  him  to  concentrate  the  whole  force 
between  Schaffhausen  and  Lake  Constance  for  a  direct  blow  at 
(Jim,  but  Moreau  had  a  plan  of  his  own  on  which  he  was  so 
much  set  that  Bonaparte  gave  way.  This  was  to  feint  with  his 
left  (Ste.  Suzanne)  and  left  centre  (Gouvion  St.  Cyr)  against 
the  passages  over  the  Black  Forest  by  the  valley  of  the  Kinzig 
and  the  Hollenthal,  while  his  right  centre  (his  own  corps), 

1  Cf.  Hermann,  ch.  ix.  2  Cf.  Huffer,  p.  261. 


446  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1800 


profiting  by  this  diversion,  crossed  at  Basel  and  united  with  the 
right  (Lecourbe),  which  was  to  cross  at  Schaffhausen.  Ste. 
Suzanne  was  to  recross  the  river  as  soon  as  he  had  drawn 
Kray’s  attention,  to  ascend  the  left  bank  to  Breisach,  cross 
again  there  and  come  up  by  Freibourg  on  the  left  of  St  Cyr, 
who  was  to  push  forward  by  St.  Blazien  to  the  Wutach,  where 
he  would  regain  touch  with  the  Reserve  and  Lecourbe.  This 
plan  was  perhaps  better  under  the  circumstances  than  Bonaparte’s 
more  brilliant  design,  especially  as  it  was  to  be  executed  by 
Moreau  and  not  by  Bonaparte.  It  profited  more  by  the 
dispersion  of  the  Austrians,  since  the  feint  against  their  right 
confirmed  them  in  their  fears  for  that  wing,  and  so  delayed 
their  concentration  ;  also  it  utilised  more  points  of  passage 
over  the  Rhine.  To  throw  the  whole  force  across  between 
Schaffhausen  and  the  lake  would  have  taken  time,  possibly 
so  much  that  Kray  would  have  discovered  his  danger  and 
concentrated  in  time.  It  is  true  that  Moreau  risked  defeat  in 
detail  in  case  Kray  concentrated  his  forces  to  fall  on  St.  Cyr 
or  Lecourbe  before  they  had  got  into  touch  with  the  Reserve 
and  with  each  other ;  but  this  was  not  likely  with  so  dispersed 
and  slow-moving  a  force  as  the  Austrians. 

In  the  main  the  scheme,  which  was  well  executed  by 
Moreau  and  his  subordinates,  proved  successful.  On  April 
25th  Ste.  Suzanne  opened  the  move;  by  May  2nd,  after 
much  marching  and  manoeuvring  and  some  fighting,  Moreau 
had  concentrated  three  of  his  corps  between  the  Aach 
and  the  Wutach,  and  Ste.  Suzanne  had  come  through 
the  Hollenthal  and  was  at  Neustadt  on  the  flank  of  the 
Austrians,  who  were  endeavouring  to  concentrate  between 
Stockach  and  Geisingen.  In  this,  however,  they  were  unsucess- 
ful,  for  Lecourbe  pushing  up  the  Aach  fell  on  their  left  at 
Stockach  (May  3rd),  routed  it,  and  captured  the  vast  magazines 
there.  Meanwhile  Kray  bringing  up  his  main  body  from 
Geisingen  came  into  conflict  with  St.  Cyr  at  Zollhaus  and 
with  Moreau’s  Reserve  at  Engen.  The  battle  was  stubbornly 
contested ;  Kray  on  the  whole  held  his  own,  and  only  the  bad 
news  from  Stockach  caused  him  to  fall  back  to  Tuttlingen 
lest  Lecourbe’s  advance  on  Moeskirch  should  cut  him  off  from 
Ulm.  Moreau,  having  let  St.  Cyr  and  the  Reserve  be  drawn 
into  battle  to  his  left,  could  not  reinforce  Lecourbe  and  so 
secure  a  decisive  success,  and  thus  Kray  was  able  to  reach 


i8oo]  MARENGO,  HOIIENLINDEN  AND  LUNEVILLE  447 

Moeskirch  in  safety  (May  4th).  Driven  from  Moeskirch  by 
the  French  attack  next  day,  he  rallied  his  men  and  thrust  his 
right  forward  to  cover  the  retreat  of  an  isolated  division  from 
Tuttlingen ;  but  though  successful  in  this  and  in  checking 
Lecourbe’s  advance,  he  had  to  fall  back  to  the  North  of  the 
Danube  to  avoid  being  cut  off  by  Ste.  Suzanne,  who  was 
coming  down  the  Danube  from  Donaueschingen.  By  May  12th 
Kray  was  back  at  Ulm,  where  he  rallied  some  60,000  men. 
He  had  lost  nearly  30,000  as  well  as  the  magazines  for  which 
he  had  risked  so  much ;  but  Moreau,  having  had  to  detach 
Moncey’s  corps  to  Italy,  was  in  no  position  to  press  home  his 
success  at  once,  and  was  for  some  time  detained  by  Kray’s 
stand  at  Ulm.  Once  he  tried  to  turn  the  position  by  thrusting 
his  right  across  the  I  Her  higher  up ;  but  Kray  fell  on  the 
detached  corps  left  in  front  of  Ulm  to  cover  the  French 
communications  with  Schaffhausen  and  brought  Moreau  back 
to  its  succour  (May  16th).  Undeterred,  the  French  commander 
renewed  the  attempt  a  fortnight  later.  This  time  the  “con¬ 
taining”  corps,  left  between  the  Danube  and  Iller  to  protect  the 
French  communications  with  the  Rhine,  held  its  own  against  all 
Kray’s  attacks,  and  Moreau’s  right  pushed  out  to  Augsburg. 
Thence  it  pressed  on  to  the  Danube  at  Lavingen  and  Blenheim, 
the  centre  preparing  to  cross  at  Gunzburg.  The  French 
success  in  securing  a  passage  at  Blenheim  (June  19th)  made 
Ulm  untenable.  With  his  communications  imperilled  and  his 
retreat  along  the  left  bank  alone  open  to  him,  Kray  fell  back 
by  Heidenheim  to  Nordlingen  (June  23rd),  and  passing  across 
the  front  of  the  French  regained  the  Danube  below  them 
(June  26th),  thus  placing  himself  between  them  and  Vienna. 
Moreau,  however,  returning  South  of  the  Danube  overran 
Bavaria  up  to  the  Isar,  profiting  greatly  by  the  comparatively 
unexhausted  state  of  the  country.  On  July  15th  an  armistice 
put  a  temporary  stop  to  hostilities,  Kray  in  accordance  with  its 
terms  retiring  behind  the  Inn. 

This  want  of  success  in  both  theatres  of  war  was  a 
powerful  argument  for  those  persons  at  Vienna  who  desired  to 
accept  Bonaparte’s  renewed  proposals  for  peace.  The  only 
real  obstacle  was  that  a  new  subsidy-treaty  had  just  been 
concluded  with  England  by  which  Austria  received  ^2,000,000, 
promising  in  return  not  to  conclude  a  separate  peace  before 
February  28th,  1801.  Thus  as  Bonaparte  declined  to  admit 


443  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1800 


England  to  a  peace  conference,  except  on  terms  England 
would  not  contemplate,  namely,  that  he  might  relieve  Malta 
and  Egypt,  Austria  could  only  obtain  peace  by  abandoning 
her  obligations  to  England.  The  armistice  should  have 
expired  on  September  20th,  but  it  was  renewed  for  another  six 
weeks  from  that  date,  a  concession  which  Austria  purchased  by 
surrendering  Ulm,  Ingolstadt  and  Philipsburg.  This  had  a 
rather  disastrous  influence  over  some  of  Austria’s  German 
allies,  who  believed  that  the  Emperor  was  sacrificing  the 
interests  of  the  Empire  to  the  security  of  his  hereditary 
dominions.  The  Elector  of  Cologne,  for  example,  went  so  far 
as  to  obtain  passports  from  the  French  for  the  withdrawal  of 
his  troops  from  Ulm  to  Munster,  where  they  sheltered  behind 
the  neutrality  of  the  line  of  demarcation.1  Still  Austria 
needed  the  respite  badly.  She  was  making  great  efforts  to 
resume  hostilities  if  necessary,  reinforcing  and  re-equipping 
the  army,  but  her  preparations  were  still  incomplete.  The  peace 
party  was,  moreover,  steadily  gaining  ground,  which  was  in 
itself  no  indistinct  indication  that  Thugut’s  unpopularity  was 
increasing.  He  was  held  responsible  for  the  disasters  of  the  war  ; 
and  though,  indeed,  his  inefficiency  as  an  administrator  was  in 
large  measure  to  blame,  it  was  not  on  this  that  public  resent¬ 
ment  fixed,  but  on  his  policy  of  resistance  to  France.  He  was 
accused,  with  little  reason,  of  making  the  interests  of  Austria 
subservient  to  those  of  England.  He  was  not  accused,  as  he 
might  well  have  been,  of  wrecking  the  campaign  of  1799  by  his 
undue  haste  to  reap  the  fruits  of  victory  without  troubling  to 
make  success  certain  by  vigorous  and  whole-hearted  co-opera¬ 
tion  with  his  allies.  It  was  obvious  that  his  fall  was  imminent. 
On  October  8th  his  resignation  of  the  Ministry  of  Foreign 
Affairs  was  announced,  and  Louis  Cobenzl  was  appointed 
a  member  of  the  Conference  and  Vice  State  Chancellor  to 
direct  the  Court,  State  and  Cabinet  Chanceries,  Lehrbach 
taking  the  Home  Office. 

Cobenzl’s  first  act  was  to  go  in  person  to  Luneville  in 
Alsace  to  discuss  terms  with  Joseph  Bonaparte.  The  sole 
obstacle  to  peace  was  Austria’s  refusal  to  agree  to  England’s 
exclusion  from  the  peace  congress.  Cobenzl  would  have 
even  been  prepared  2  to  make  a  secret  treaty  with  France  not 

1  Cf.  Huffer,  Quellen  zur  Gcschiclite  des  Krieges ,  lygg-iSoo,  ii.  414. 

2  Cf.  Haiisser,  ii.  30S. 


1800]  MARENGO,  HOHENLINDEN  AND  LUNEVILLE  449 

to  be  divulged  until  Austria’s  obligation  to  England  was  at  an 
end,  but  nothing  had  been  settled  when  on  November  26th  the 
armistice  came  to  an  end  and  hostilities  were  resumed. 

Austria  had  made  good  use  of  the  armistice.  She  had 
brought  up  her  army  on  the  Danube  to  130,000,  including  12,000 
Bavarians  in  British  pay.  Of  this  force  30,000  under  Klenau 
were  on  the  left  bank,  20,000  under  Hiller  in  Tyrol,  the  rest, 
now  under  the  command  of  the  Emperor’s  fifth  brother, 
the  eighteen  year  old  Archduke  John,  held  the  line  of  the 
Inn.  Similarly  in  Italy,  Bellegarde  had  replaced  Melas  and 
was  strongly  posted  between  the  Mincio  and  the  Adige,  rely¬ 
ing  on  the  fortresses  of  the  “Quadrilateral.”  Opposite  them 
stood  Moreau  in  Bavaria  with  100,000  n}en  flanked  by  12,000 
under  Lecourbe  in  Western  Tyrol  and  20,000  more  under 
Augereau  North  of  the  Danube.  In  Italy,  Brune  threatened 
Bellegarde’s  front,  while  a  column  under  Macdonald,  crossing 
the  Spliigen  Pass  in  the  depth  of  winter,  forced  its  way  by 
the  Valtelline  into  the  upper  valley  of  the  Adige,  and  after 
tremendous  perils  and  sufferings  captured  Trent  (end  of 
December),  thus  interposing  between  Hiller  and  Bellegarde’s 
connecting  link,  his  extreme  right  under  Loudon. 

Meanwhile  the  Austrians  in  Germany  had  taken  the 
offensive,  had  crossed  the  Inn  the  day  the  armistice  expired 
(Nov.  26th),  and  were  moving  against  Moreau.  This  action, 
somewhat  rash,  since  the  Austrian  troops  were  not  only  inferior 
in  numbers  to  the  French  veterans,  but  were  mainly  composed 
of  raw  recruits  and  were  but  ill-equipped,  is  to  be  explained 
by  the  young  Archduke’s  belief  that  the  previous  defeats  of  the 
Austrians  had  been  due  to  their  excessive  caution.  This  may 
have  been  true,  but  undue  temerity  was  no  improvement  on 
undue  caution,  especially  as  rain  and  the  bad  state  of  the  roads 
combined  with  the  inefficiency  of  the  Archduke’s  Staff  to  so 
delay  the  Austrian  movements  that  the  original  plan  of  an 
advance  past  Moreau’s  left  by  Braunau  and  Landshut  on  Munich 
had  to  be  abandoned  for  a  direct  blow  at  the  French  left.1 
Near  Ampfing  on  December  1st  the  Archduke  fell  on  Grenier 

1  Nothing  stands  out  more  clearly  from  a  study  of  the  documents  dealing  with  the 
campaign  from  the  Austrian  side  than  the  imprudence  of  the  Archduke  and  his  chief 
advisers,  Weyrother  and  Lauer.  The  original  plan  of  outflanking  the  French  left 
might  have  worked  well  if  executed  in  good  weather  and  by  a  well-organised  army 
with  an  efficient  Staff.  Under  existing  circumstances  the  advance  was  a  piece  of 
almost  criminal  folly.  Cf.  Illiffer,  op.  cit .  pp.  415-426. 

29 


450  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1800 


and  the  three  divisions  (33,000  men)  who  formed  his  corps. 
Taken  by  surprise  and  outnumbered,  the  French  fell  back 
fighting  stubbornly  on  Hohenlinden,  being  succoured  in  their 
retreat  by  Grouchy’s  division  of  the  centre ;  but  they  left  6 
guns  and  nearly  1000  prisoners  behind,  and  the  Austrians  were 
much  elated  by  their  success.1  Hohenlinden  lies  in  a  clearing 
of  the  Forest  of  Ebersberg,  and  though  the  excellent  high-road 
from  Muhldorf  to  Munich  leads  through  it,  the  woods  are  so 
close  to  the  road  as  to  convert  it  into  a  regular  defile,  while 
the  side-roads  and  forest  paths  on  either  flank  are  but  ill-fitted 
for  military  manoeuvres.  Yet  on  December  3rd  the  Archduke 
plunged  gaily  into  the  defile  with  16,000  men,  two  columns 
under  Latour  (11,000)  and  Keinmayer  (16,000)  moving  parallel 
with  him  on  his  right ;  while  to  the  Southward  Riesch  with 
13,000  pushed  forward  on  Albaching,  intending  to  outflank  the 
right  of  Grenier’s  position  at  Hohenlinden.  The  despatch  in 
which  Zweibriicken,  the  commander  of  the  Bavarian  contingent,2 
announced  to  his  Electoral  master  3  that  “  your  Highness’  troops 
have  been  sacrificed  by  ignorance  and  ineptitude,”  is  a  scathing 
commentary  on  the  Austrian  Staff.  No  proper  precautions 
were  taken  to  secure  the  simultaneous  co-operation  of  the 
different  columns,  the  flanks  were  not  protected  by  patrols,  no 
reserve  was  told  off,  and  the  artillery  and  baggage  were  allowed 
to  take  the  road  before  it  had  been  properly  secured  by  the 
capture  of  Hohenlinden.  The  culminating  complaint  was  that 
at  the  moment  the  movement  began  the  Archduke  and  the 
whole  Headquarter  Staff  were  comfortably  asleep.  Therefore 
it  is  hardly  surprising  that  disaster  followed. 

Utterly  uncombined  and  ill-timed,  the  Austrian  columns 
came  into  action  one  by  one.  The  Archduke,  moving  faster 
than  his  supporters,  since  his  road  was  the  best,  engaged  Ney 
and  Grouchy  around  Hohenlinden  about  8  a.m.  Gradually 
Latour  and  Keinmayer  came  up,  but  neither  could  make  much 
impression  on  Bastoul  and  Legrand.  But  it  was  on  the  left 
that  matters  went  most  amiss.  Riesch,  delayed  by  the  bad  road 
and  the  falling  snow,  went  astray  in  the  woods,  and  never 
reached  his  appointed  place.  This  exposed  the  left  flank  of 
the  main  column  to  an  attack  from  the  French  right  at 
Ebersberg,  and  Moreau  pushed  Durutte  and  Decaen  up  to 

1  Cf.  Hiiffer,  p.  428. 

2  William  of  Zweibrlicken-Birkenfeld,  brother-in-law  of  the  Elector. 

3  Cf.  Hiiffer,  p.  452. 


1800]  MARENGO,  HOHENLINDEN  AND  LUNfiVILLE  451 

St.  Christopher  to  hold  Riesch  at  bay,  while  under  cover  of  this 
he  hurled  Richepanse  against  the  Bavarian  division  which  formed 
the  rear  of  the  Archdukes  long  column  on  the  high-road. 
Hampered  by  the  guns  and  waggons  which  cumbered  the  road, 
the  Bavarians  could  not  deploy  properly,  and  simultaneously 
with  Richepanse’s  onslaught  Ney  made  a  counter-attack  on  the 
head  of  the  column,  outflanking  it  on  both  wings.  Before  this 
double  assult  the  Archduke’s  men  gave  way  in  disorder.  Only 
the  intervention  of  Lichtenstein’s  cavalry  saved  the  column 
from  complete  destruction.  Their  defeat  was  decisive  ;  Riesch 
had  to  fall  back,  and  the  Austrian  right  had  the  mortification  of 
having  to  do  the  same  just  as  they  were  beginning  to  gain  ground.1 

Leaving  17,000  killed  and  prisoners  behind  them,  the 
Austrians  recrossed  the  Inn  (Dec.  5th)  in  a  state  of  demoralisa¬ 
tion  and  exhaustion.  Energetically  pursued  by  Moreau,  they 
failed  to  stand  behind  either  the  Salza,  the  Traun  or  the  Enns, 
although  Archduke  Charles,  to  whom  the  War  Council  had 
turned  in  its  alarm,  took  over  the  command  and  made  every 
effort  to  rally  them.  Only  when  he  had  outmarched  the  forces 
on  his  flanks  did  Moreau  check  his  pursuit.  North  of  the 
Danube,  Augereau  was  pressing  Klenau  back  from  Aschaffenburg 
to  Ingolstadt.  In  Italy,  Macdonald’s  adventurous  march  had 
outflanked  Bellegarde  and  enabled  Brune  to  cross  the  Mincio  at 
Pozzolo  and  the  Adige  at  Bussolengo,  and  to  take  Verona.  On 
neither  quarter  was  there  any  hope  for  Austria.  Hohenlinden 
had  finally  damped  the  bellicose  ardour  of  the  Elector  of 
Bavaria.  Defeat  had  revived  his  distrust  of  the  Hapsburgs,  and 
had  thrown  him  under  the  influence  of  Prussia.  So  anxious  was 
he  for  peace  that  he  was  prepared  to  forego  the  payments  due 
from  England,  and  on  December  8th  he  wrote  to  recall  the  relics 
of  the  subsidiary  corps.2  So  hopeless  was  the  military  situation,3 
so  broken  and  dejected  the  Austrian  troops,  who  had  ceased  to 
bear  any  resemblance  to  an  army  and  had  become  a  mass  of 
fugitives,4  that  Archduke  Charles  could  only  counsel  surrender, 
and  on  December  25th  he  had  to  agree  to  the  Armistice  of 
Speyer,  which  handed  Wurzburg  and  the  fortresses  of  Bavaria 
over  to  the  French,  provided  for  the  evacuation  of  Tyrol, 
Carinthia  and  the  Grisons,  dismissed  the  Tyrolese  “  insurrection  ” 
to  their  homes,  and  pledged  Austria  to  make  peace  apart  from 
England.5  Harsh  and  exceedingly  disgraceful  as  the  terms 

1  Cf.  Huffier,  pp.  437-480.  2  Ibid.  p.  481. 

3  Ibid.  pp.  490-492.  4  Ibid.  p.  495.  5  Ibid.  pp.  508-511. 


452  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1800 


were,  there  was  no  alternative  but  a  defeat  which  would  have 
left  Austria  absolutely  at  the  mercy  of  the  enemy.1  In  January 
an  armistice  was  signed  at  Treviso  for  the  Italian  armies. 

Little  time  was  lost  in  converting  these  armistices  into 
a  definite  peace.  Bonaparte  could  name  his  conditions,  and 
on  those  conditions  he  insisted  inexorably.  Cobenzl  made  no 
attempt  to  obtain  the  admission  of  England  to  the  negotiations  : 
his  efforts  were  directed  to  trying  to  get  Modena  and  Tuscany 
restored  to  their  rulers,  and  to  save  part  of  Lombardy  for 
Austria.  But  the  Adige  frontier  was  all  that  the  First  Consul 
would  grant;  he  was  prepared  to  compensate  Tuscany  with  the 
Legations,  but  Modena’s  compensation  must  be  in  Germany,  and 
it  was  imperatively  demanded  that  the  Emperor  should  cede 
the  Left  Bank  at  once  in  his  capacity  as  head  of  the  Empire. 
Unpalatable  as  these  demands  were,  and  strenuously  as  Cobenzl 
fought  point  after  point,  it  was  not  of  much  use  resisting 
Bonaparte,  especially  as  he  had  by  this  time  bound  the  Baltic 
Powers,  including  Prussia,  to  him  in  the  shape  of  the  “  Armed 
Neutrality.”  Moreover,  the  spectacle  of  South  Germany,  helpless 
and  at  the  mercy  of  the  French  armies,  increased  the  Emperor’s 
readiness  for  peace.  If  the  discipline  and  behaviour  of  the  armies 
of  the  Consulate  was  an  improvement  on  that  of  the  troops  of  the 
Directory,  their  presence  was  sufficiently  burdensome  and  op¬ 
pressive.  There  was  no  appeal  against  the  plunderings  of  the 
rank  and  file  when  all  they  did  was  to  follow  the  example  of  their 
generals.  With  no  small  part  of  his  own  hereditary  dominions 
in  French  hands,  Francis  II  was  most  anxious  to  come  to  terms. 
Fear  of  a  Franco-Russian  coalition,  for  Paul  was  by  now  as  keen 
an  admirer  of  Napoleon  as  he  had  been  a  bitter  opponent  of  the 
Republic  three  years  before,  made  him  abandon  hope  of  saving 
even  the  ecclesiastical  Electorates  from  being  secularised,  and 
on  February  9th,  1801,  the  Peace  of  Luneville  was  signed. 

The  Peace  of  Campo  Formio  was  accepted  as  the  basis  of 
the  territorial  rearrangements,  but  subject  to  certain  not  unim¬ 
portant  modifications.  The  Emperor  signed  the  peace  on  be¬ 
half  of  the  Empire,  openly  ceding  the  Left  Bank  to  France,  and 
no  longer  attempting  to  hide  this  surrender  in  a  secret  article. 

It  was  agreed  that  the  rulers  thus  dispossessed  should  be 
“  compensated  ”  for  their  losses  by  means  of  secularisation,  a 
provision  which  practically  amounted  to  the  destruction  of  the 
existing  constitution  of  the  Empire.  While  France  obtained 

1  Archduke  Charles  to  Emperor.  Huffer,  p.  513. 


MARENGO  June  H#  1800 


LESSANDRIA 


Caste!  Cerioto 


Kellermann 


_  San 
Ciuliano 


Return 

of 

Desaix 


To  Novi 


H0HENL1NDEN  Dec. 3 -  1800. 


To  Tortond 


i8oo]  MARENGO,  HOITENLINDEN  AND  LUNEVILLE  453 

recognition  from  the  Emperor  of  the  client  Republics  with 
which  she  was  surrounded,  the  Batavian,  the  Cisalpine,  the 
Helvetian  and  the  Ligurian,  Austria’s  clients  in  Italy,  her  cadet 
branches  at  Florence  and  Modena,  lost  their  lands,  and  were 
added  to  the  long  list  of  persons  deserving  compensation  at  the 
expense  of  the  Empire.  Tuscany  went  to  the  dispossessed 
Prince  of  Parma1  as  the  kingdom  of  Etruria,  a  change  of  rulers 
which  was  not  to  its  advantage ;  Modena  was  swallowed  up  in 
the  Cisalpine,  soon  (Feb.  1802)  to  become  the  Italian  Republic. 
The  King  of  the  Two  Sicilies  was  restored  to  his  dominions, 
but  Charles  Emmanuel  iv  did  not  recover  Piedmont.  No  stipu¬ 
lations  were  made  in  the  treaty  as  to  its  fate,  but  in  April  1801 
it  was  divided  into  departments  ;  and  in  September  1802  it  was 
formally  annexed  to  France.  Thus  with  the  Adige  as  Austria’s 
frontier  in  Italy  the  peninsula  was  completely  dominated  by 
France. 

Still  the  peace  was  not  altogether  disadvantageous  to 
Austria.  If  it  be  compared  with  Campo  Formio  she  really 
gained  in  territory,  for  the  secularised  bishoprics  of  Brixen  and 
Trent  were  a  more  than  ample  set-off  against  the  loss  of  a  small 
strip  between  the  Po  and  the  Adige ;  and  if  she  gave  up  the 
Breisgau,  it  was  to  a  connection  of  her  own  House,  the  Duke  of 
Modena.2  Thugut’s  designs  on  Bavaria  were  not  realised,  but  the 
cession  of  the  Archbishopric  of  Salzburg  to  Archduke  Ferdinand, 
the  ex-Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany,  was  most  acceptable  to  the 
Hapsburgs.  To  the  Empire  Luneville  was  a  severe  blow. 
The  definite  cession  of  25,000  square  miles  and  3J  millions  of 
people 3  was  an  absolute  loss.  The  Empire  could  not  comfort 
itself  with  the  reflection  which  consoled  Austria  for  the  loss  of 
Belgium,  that  it  was  losing  a  source  of  weakness  and  gaining  a 
better  strategical  frontier.  The  Left  Bank  territories  were  an 
integral  and  a  valuable  part  of  the  Empire,  and  the  Rhine  had 
not  proved  a  very  strong  frontier  either  in  1796  or  in  1800. 
Moreover,  it  was  only  on  condition  that  their  fortifications  should 
be  “  slighted  ”  that  the  French  had  evacuated  the  towns  they 
held  on  the  right  of  the  river.4 

1  Ferdinand,  son  of  Don  Phillip  of  Spain  and  Marie  Louise,  daughter  of  Louis  xv. 

2  (1780-1803),  father-in-law  of  Ferdinand,  son  of  Maria  Theresa  and  Duke  of 
Modena-Breisgau  (1803-1806). 

3  Ilaiisser,  ii.  328. 

4  Hatisser,  of  course,  reckons  in  German  miles,  which  are  equal  to  4  '6  or  47 
English  miles :  thus  the  German  square  mile  is,  roughly  speaking,  22  times  as  large 
as  the  English. 


454  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1800 


To  the  inhabitants  of  the  Left  Bank  the  definite  separation 
from  Germany  came  as  in  some  way  a  relief.  In  hardly  any 
other  part  of  Germany  were  the  characteristics  of  German 
disunion  so  pronounced.  The  Left  Bank  was  divided  into  the 
most  minute  parcels ;  there  was  not  even  as  large  a  state  as 
Baden  or  Oldenburg  to  give  some  approach  to  unity,  and  the 
only  independent  states  which  exceeded  the  infinitesimal  were 
precisely  those  in  which  there  was  the  least  approach  to  a 
vigorous  localism,  ecclesiastical  Principalities.  The  separation 
from  Germany  was  not  likely  to  be  unpopular  among  people 
bound  to  Germany  neither  by  practical  nor  sentimental  consider¬ 
ations.  The  Empire  had  been  incapable  of  defending  them 
against  the  exactions  and  excesses  of  the  French ;  as  the 
subjects  of  the  Republic  they  would  at  least  have  a  claim  to 
preferential  treatment.  Nor  were  German  patriotism  and  national 
sentiment  so  strongly  rooted  among  them  but  that  they  could 
be  effaced  by  a  few  years  of  careful,  honest  and  appropriate 
administration.  And  this  they  did  obtain  from  the  Consulate. 
Even  under  the  Directory  they  had  been  better  off  than  under 
ecclesiastical  or  Palatinate  rule,  and  now  that,  under  the  direction 
of  Jean  Bon  St.  Andre,  a  permanent  organisation  was  substituted 
for  the  temporary  arrangements  of  the  last  ten  years,  the  Left 
Bank  enjoyed  a  material  prosperity  which  went  far  to  reconcile 
it  to  incorporation  in  France.1  It  was  not  till  France  itself  began 
to  weary  under  the  burdens  which  the  extension  of  the  Napoleonic 
supremacy  imposed  upon  her,  not  till  Napoleon’s  oppression  of 
Germany  beyond  the  Rhine  had  begun  to  drive  home  into 
Bavarian  and  Westphalian,  into  Prussian  and  Wtirtemberger, 
the  consciousness  that  union  is  strength  and  that  only  by  a  joint 
effort  could  Germany  free  herself  of  the  conscription  and  the 
Continental  System,  that  the  Left  Bank  became  alive  to  the  fact 
that  the  Rhine  was  a  German  river,  and  not  the  boundary 
between  France  and  Germany.  And  not  even  then  was  there 
any  strong  desire  in  the  Rhineland  for  separation  from  France. 
The  return  to  German  rulers  was  accepted,  not  welcomed.  Had 
Bonaparte  managed  to  keep  the  treaties  of  Luneville  and  Amiens, 
and  avoided  the  continual  aggressions  which  bound  Europe 
together  against  him,  Mayence  and  Cologne  might  have  become 
as  French  as  were  Metz  and  Strassburg  in  1870. 

1  Cf.  Fisher’s  chapter  on  the  Rhine  Departments. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 


THE  RESETTLEMENT  OF  1803 

IN  the  whole  history  of  German  disunion  1  and  particularism 
there  are  few  pages  more  discreditable  than  that  which 
narrates  the  protracted  negotiations  which  followed  the  Peace 
of  Luneville.  The  spectacle  of  the  Princes  of  Germany  vying 
with  one  another  in  currying  favour  with  Napoleon,  of  the 
bribery,  the  intrigues,  the  utter  selfishness,  the  want  of  any 
appeal  to  patriotism  or  national  feeling,  is  one  which  has 
few  parallels.  It  gave  Napoleon  an  idea  of  the  lengths  to  which 
it  would  be  possible  to  carry  that  principle  of  Divide  et  impera 
on  which  he  based  his  dealings  with  the  Germans.  His  policy 
after  all  was  only  the  policy  of  Richelieu,  Mazarin  and 
Louis  XIV  attuned  to  the  altered  circumstances.  Germany 
must  not  be  allowed  to  unite.  No  Power  must  be  allowed  to 
grow  strong  enough  to  rally  the  other  states  in  defence  of  their 
common  interests.  The  estrangement  between  Austria  and 
Prussia  must  be  cultivated  and  fostered.  Austria  must  be 
isolated,  and  at  the  same  time  Prussia  must  not  be  allowed  to 
make  good  her  pretensions  to  be  the  champion  of  the  minor 
states  and  their  protector  against  Austria.  This  was  an  office 
to  be  reserved  for  France.  If  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine 
did  not  formally  take  shape  till  1806,  the  bonds  which  held  it 
together  were  being  forged  all  through  the  negotiations  of 
1801  and  1802. 

It  might  perhaps  have  been  supposed  that  the  territorial 
resettlement  of  the  Empire  was.  a  matter  to  be  left  to  the  Diet 
to  arrange.  But  the  Diet  was  quite  incapable  of  discharging 
such  a  task.  The  conditions  which  had  contributed  to  the  loss 
of  the  Left  Bank  made  it  impossible  to  setttle  on  the  “  com¬ 
pensation  ”  for  that  loss  without  the  intervention  of  the  Power 
which  had  carried  off  the  spoils.  The  first  step  in  the  process 
was,  it  is  true,  taken  with  a  celerity  altogether  foreign  to  the 
1  Cf.  Haiisser,  ii.  pp.  333  ff.  ;  also  Fisher,  pp.  3S-47. 

455 


456  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1801 


habits  of  the  Diet.  By  signing  the  Peace  of  Luneville  on 
behalf  of  the  Empire,  Francis  II  had  encroached  on  the  province 
of  the  Diet ;  but  that  body  hastened  to  condone  his  action, 
announced  to  them  on  February  25th,  1801,  by  ratifying  the 
Treaty  on  March  7th. 

The  loss  of  the  Left  Bank  having  been  thus  accepted, 
together  with  the  principle  of  compensation  by  means  of 
secularisation,  it  remained  to  arrange  a  scheme  of  redistribution, 
and  to  settle  to  whom  the  drawing  up  of  the  scheme  should 
be  entrusted.  Saxony  proposed  that  the  whole  Diet  should 
discuss  the  matter,  but  the  lay  states  were  not  inclined  to  give 
their  ecclesiastical  victims  a  voice  in  deciding  the  fate  which  was 
to  befall  them.  Bavaria  suggested  that  the  Emperor  should 
act  as  reporter,  and  should  submit  a  plan  to  the  Diet ;  a  proposal 
he  promptly  declined,  though  he  would  have  been  prepared  to 
accept  the  suggestion  of  the  ecclesiastical  states  that  the  entire 
matter  should  be  entrusted  to  him  without  appeal  to  the  Diet. 
But  such  a  plan  was  not  to  the  liking  of  Prussia  or  Bavaria  or 
any  of  the  other  larger  lay  states  who  hoped  to  see  as  extensive 
a  secularisation  as  possible.  The  Emperor  would  certainly  have 
spared  the  ecclesiastical  Electors,  usually  his  firm  adherents, 
and  he  would  probably  have  sought  to  restrict  the  secularisation 
even  more.  Hence  a  majority  in  the  College  of  Princes  favoured 
Bavaria’s  proposal,  and  the  Elector  of  Mayence,  or  rather  his 
coadjutor,  Charles  von  Dalberg,  a  clever  but  unstable  statesman 
destined  to  play  a  leading  part  in  putting  Germany  at 
Napoleon’s  disposal,  came  round  to  their  side  and  so  carried 
the  proposal  through  the  College  of  Electors  (April  30th). 
However,  the  Emperor  flatly  refused  to  entertain  a  proposal 
which  promised  him  all  the  invidious  work  without  the  satisfac¬ 
tion  of  the  decisive  voice.  Thus  the  wearisome  discussion  and 
disputes  dragged  on  almost  interminably.  Not  till  October  2nd 
was  a  Deputation  of  eight  members  appointed  to  arrange  a 
settlement  It  was  composed  of  four  members  from  the  College 
of  Electors,  Bohemia,  Brandenburg,  Mayence  and  Saxony,  and 
four  from  the  College  of  Princes,  Baden,  Bavaria,1  Wiirtemberg 
and  the  Grand  Master  of  the  Teutonic  Order.  It  was  with 
the  aid  of  France  to  draw  up  a  scheme  to  be  presented  to 
the  Diet  for  approval.  More  than  ten  months,  however, 
elapsed  before  the  Deputation  began  its  labours  at  Ratisbon 

1  The  Elector  had  a  seat  in  the  College  of  Princes  as  Duke  of  Bavaria. 


THE  RESETTLEMENT  OF  1803 


457 


t  801] 

on  August  24th,  1802.  In  the  meantime  projects  without 
number  had  been  put  forward,  only  to  be  found  unsatisfactory 
and  rejected.  Every  member  of  the  Empire  sought  to  secure 
the  favour  of  the  all-powerful  First  Consul  for  himself  or  for 
his  friends.  Austria  pushed  the  claims  of  the  Grand  Dukes 
of  Modena  and  Tuscany;  Prussia  was  urgent  for  another  non- 
German  claimant,  the  Prince  of  Orange,  who  was  connected  by 
marriage  with  the  Hohenzollern  family.  Not  a  scrap  of  ecclesi¬ 
astical  territory  but  was  claimed  by  many  competitors.  Each 
state  struggled  for  its  own  hand,  of  common  action  there  was 
none ;  and  though  a  few  people,  among  them  Stadion,  an 
Imperial  Knight  who  was  Austrian  representative  at  Berlin,  did 
try  to  reconcile  Austria  and  Prussia  in  the  hope  of  thereby  pre¬ 
venting  France  and  Russia  from  having  things  their  own  way, 
these  efforts  proved  quite  abortive. 

At  the  very  outset  of  the  negotiations  there  had  been  an 
opportunity  which  the  Emperor  might  have  utilised  to  settle  the 
matter  without  the  interference  of  France.  Bonaparte  was  still 
at  war  with  England,  and  the  Armed  Neutrality  of  the  Baltic 
Powers  on  which  he  had  counted  so  much  had  broken  down 
before  the  double  blow  of  the  murder  of  the  Czar  (March  25th, 
1801),  and  of  Nelson’s  victory  at  Copenhagen.  Bonaparte  thus 
lost  the  Russian  alliance  which  had  allowed  him  to  assume  airs 
of  domination,  and  he  had  to  somewhat  modify  his  tone.  At 
this  time  Bavaria  and  the  other  minor  states  had  not  been  won 
over  to  France  by  separate  treaties,  and  the  relations  of  Prussia 
with  France  were  rather  strained.  This  was  due  to  Prussia’s 
share  in  the  Armed  Neutrality.  The  Prussian  merchant  marine 
was  of  sufficiently  respectable  dimensions  to  have  suffered  a 
good  deal  through  the  rigorous  maritime  code  which  the  English 
applied  to  all  neutrals.  Partly  for  this  reason,  partly  from  a  wish 
not  to  be  left  isolated,  Prussia  had  adhered  to  the  Armed 
Neutrality  in  December  1800,  and  when  Denmark  occupied 
Hamburg  and  Liibeck  on  behalf  of  the  Armed  Neutrality  (March 
1801),  Prussia  did  likewise  with  Bremen,  Hanover  and  Olden¬ 
burg.  In  so  doing,  Prussia  probably  only  anticipated  France ;  at 
any  rate  her  action  was  interpreted  in  this  way  in  Hanover  and  in 
England,  and  no  opposition  was  offered.  She  gave  out  that  her 
sole  object  was  to  preserve  the  neutrality  of  North  Germany.  At 
the  same  time,  in  the  general  scramble  for  territory  there  was  no 
harm  in  having  so  valuable  an  asset  occupied  by  her  troops. 


458  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1801- 


It  was  on  this  that  Napoleon  worked.  He  did  not  wish  to  see 
Prussia  in  possession  of  the  Franconian  bishoprics  she  coveted 
so  much  as  a  foothold  in  Southern  Germany.  He  therefore 
urged  Prussia  to  keep  Planover,  to  which  Prussia  would  not 
agree  unless  England’s  consent  could  be  obtained.  Another 
suggestion,  that  Prussia  should  resign  Hanover  to  France,  and 
receive  Bamberg  and  Wurzburg,  was  flatly  rejected.  Hence 
there  was  some  coolness  between  France  and  Prussia,  an  oppor¬ 
tunity  Austria  would  have  done  well  to  seize.  Unluckily  a 
quarrel  over  the  sees  of  Cologne  and  Munster,  left  vacant  by 
the  death  of  the  Elector  Archduke  Maximilian  (July  27th), 
created  a  new  breach  between  the  chief  Powers  of  Germany. 
Prussia  proposed  that  pending  the  resettlement  no  election 
should  be  made ;  and  when  Austria  proceeded  to  use  her 
influence  with  the  Chapters  to  get  Archduke  Anthony,  the 
Emperor’s  youngest  brother,  elected  in  his  uncle’s  place  (at 
Munster,  Sept.  9th,  at  Cologne,  Oct.  7th),  she  declined 
to  recognise  the  election.  The  Emperor  thereupon  issued  a 
strongly-worded  proclamation  condemning  Prussia’s  action. 

With  Austria  and  Prussia  thus  at  variance,  with  all  Germany 
in  confusion  and  disorder,  it  was  not  wonderful  if  the  minor 
Princes  appealed  to  one  so  firm,  so  decided  and  so  strong  as 
Bonaparte.  Bavaria,  after  contemplating  a  scheme  put  forward 
by  Austria  which  would  have  practically  allowed  her  to  absorb 
all  the  petty  states,  lay  and  ecclesiastical  alike,  of  Swabia  in 
return  for  the  cession  of  most  of  the  Upper  Palatinate  to  Austria, 
returned  to  the  policy  of  1703  and  concluded  a  separate  treaty 
with  France  as  early  as  August  1801,  and  confirmed  it  in  the 
following  May.  This  was  indeed  the  method  by  which 
Bonaparte  achieved  his  aims.  A  series  of  separate  treaties 
between  France  and  the  various  Powers  of  Germany  arranged 
the  details  of  the  compensation.  These  treaties  had  a  double 
object.  On  the  one  hand,  they  bound  the  middle  states  of 
Germany  to  Bonaparte,  to  whom  they  owed  their  gains ;  on  the 
other,  by  enriching  the  friends  of  Russia  in  Southern  Germany, 
notably  Baden,  the  home  of  Alexander’s  wife,  and  Wiirtemberg, 
his  mother’s  country,  they  conciliated  the  Czar.  Before  the 
Deputation  met  four  of  its  members  had  thus  pledged  themselves, 
and  Dalberg,  quick  to  see  that  not  Austria,  nor  Prussia,  but 
Bonaparte  was  the  dispenser  of  patronage  and  the  only 
Power  by  whose  aid  he  could  hope  to  save  something  in  the 


iSo3] 


THE  RESETTLEMENT  OF  1803 


459 


secularisation,  was  now  completely  at  the  First  Consul’s 
service. 

Thus  though  the  Deputation’s  deliberations  produced  no 
result,  the  matter  was  being  settled  out  of  court,  and  all  that 
the  Deputation  could  do  was  to  accept  the  Franco-Russian 
proposals.  On  December  6th  the  scheme  was  laid  before 
the  Diet  without  even  waiting  to  obtain  the  Emperor’s  assent 
Bonaparte  might  fairly  excuse  the  abruptness  of  his  action 
by  the  utter  failure  of  the  Empire  to  arrive  at  any  con¬ 
clusion  as  the  result  of  a  year’s  deliberations.  If  he  had 
not  intervened,  nothing  would  ever  have  been  settled.  The 
Diet  had  no  choice  but  to  accept,  and  Bonaparte,  not  anxious 
to  drive  Austria  to  extremities  when  war  with  England  was 
threatening  and  when  a  change  of  ministry  in  Russia  had 
substituted  the  unfriendly  Woronzov  for  Gallophils  in  Kurakin 
and  Kotschubev,  secured  the  Emperor’s  assent  by  concessions. 
He  agreed  to  let  Salzburg  go  to  Archduke  Ferdinand,  the 
dispossessed  Duke  of  Tuscany,  while  the  other  Hapsburg 
claimant  for  compensation,  the  Duke  of  Modena,  was  to  receive 
the  Breisgau  and  Ortenau,  Austria  obtaining  instead  the 
Bishoprics  of  Brixen  and  Trent.1 

Certain  slight  modifications  were  made  by  the  Diet  in  the 
scheme  submitted  to  it,  but  on  the  whole  the  “  Recess  ”  of 
February  25th,  1803,  reproduced  the  proposals  which  France 
and  Russia  had  laid  before  the  Deputation  on  September  8th, 
1802.  The  final  step,  the  ratification  by  the  Emperor,  took  place 
on  April  27th,  1803. 

The  changes  thus  sanctioned  by  the  Diet  really  amounted 
to  the  destruction  of  the  old  order  and  the  dissolution  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  It  was  veiled  under  a  thin  veneer  of 
decency  and  formality,  inasmuch  as  the  execution  of  the 
scheme  was  left  to  the  Diet  itself,  and  a  principle  was  found  on 
which  the  annexation  of  the  Church  lands  could  be  defended. 
This  principle  was  that  of  heredity,  and  as  hereditary  rulers  the 
Counts  and  Imperial  Knights  whose  existence  contributed  so 
much  to  the  territorial  intricacies  of  South  and  Western  Germany 
escaped  molestation.2  But  with  three  exceptions  the  ecclesiastical 
states  disappeared,  and  the  balance  of  power  in  the  Diet  was 
altogether  altered.  Moreover,  the  Imperial  villages  were  media¬ 
tised,  and  their  fate  was  shared  by  all  but  six  of  the  Free  Cities, 
1  Haiisser,  ii.  391.  2  Cf.  Seeley’s  Stem,  i.  124. 


460  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1803 


Augsburg,  Bremen,  Frankfurt,  Hamburg,  Liibeck  and  Nurem¬ 
berg  alone  retaining  their  old  independence.  Their  neutrality 
was  indeed  guaranteed  with  full  judicial  independence  and 
territorial  sovereignty,  they  even  obtained  slight  gains  of  territory  ; 
but  even  so  they  must  have  felt  their  position  none  too  secure. 

Though  so  much  had  been  said  about  compensation,  in  the 
actual  redistribution  there  was  no  attempt  to  make  losses  and 
gains  proportionate.  Thus  while  Bavaria,  which  had  lost  more 
territory  on  the  Left  Bank  than  any  other  Power,  including 
Simmern,  Jiilich,  Zweibriicken  and  part  of  the  Palatinate, 
obtained  about  6400  square  miles  in  return  for  the  4800  which  she 
lost;  Prussia,  whose  losses  only  amounted  to  a  little  over  1000 
square  miles,  received  nearly  5000;  Wiirtemberg  was  paid  four¬ 
fold  for  the  150  square  miles  of  Mompelgard,  and  Baden’s  gain 
of  1300  square  miles  was  out  of  all  due  proportion  to  the  180 
she  relinquished.  Bonaparte  used  the  spoils  of  the  Church  not 
to  do  justice  to  the  dispossessed,  but  to  buy  himself  partisans  in 
South  Germany. 

The  net  result  of  the  redistribution  was  to  build  up  a 
number  of  medium  -  sized  states  with  some  approach  to 
geographical  homogeneity.  The  separation  and  division  of 
even  the  pettiest  states,  which  had  been  so  strong  a  barrier  to 
administrative  unity,  to  good  government,  and  to  the  growth 
of  common  interests,  was  to  some  extent  removed.  The  minor 
lay  states  remained  but  the  arguments  which  had  been  used  to 
justify  the  suppression  of  the  abbeys  and  Free  Cities  might 
be  urged  with  equal  force  against  the  continued  independent 
existence  of  the  Counts  and  Knights.  The  idea  of  rounding 
off  the  dominions  of  a  middle  state  by  the  incorporation  of  the 
independent  parcels  which  broke  up  its  homogeneity  was  new, 
but  it  was  readily  accepted.  The  expediency  and  propriety  of 
simplifying  the  political  map  commended  itself  strongly  to  those 
who  survived  the  process  and  profited  by  it.  The  land-hunger 
of  Bavaria  and  Wiirtemberg  could  be  represented  as  the  only 
chance  of  political  salvation  for  the  scattered  districts  of 
Swabia,  too  small  to  justify  independence,  too  petty  and  poor 
to  support  the  separate  court  and  the  complex  administration 
with  which  every  minor  potentate  surrounded  himself.  Stein 
might  protest  against  the  incorporation  of  his  hereditary 
dominions  in  as  small  a  state  as  Nassau,1  but  it  must  be 

1  Cf.  Seeley’s,  Stein,  i.  126. 


1803] 


THE  RESETTLEMENT  OF  1803 


461 


admitted  that  in  many  respects  the  growth  of  middle  states 
like  Baden  and  Hesse-Cassel  was  an  advance  on  the  system  it 
replaced.  As  long  as  the  pettiest  Prince  claimed  an  inde¬ 
pendence  which  was  real  enough  to  prevent  the  internal  union 
of  Germany  but  a  mere  farce  from  an  international  standpoint, 
the  aggrandisement  of  the  middle  states  was  not  without 
justification.  Small  as  they  were,  they  had  possibilities  of  being 
healthy  and  efficient  polities  which  their  physical  limitations 
denied  to  the  pettier  units.  Indeed,  if  the  process  had  only  been 
carried  a  little  further,  it  would  be  easier  to  justify  it.  Had 
all  the  minor  Princes  like  the  Arembergs,  the  Salms,  Thurn  und 
Taxis  and  the  branches  of  the  House  of  Reuss,  been  absorbed 
into  larger  entities,  while  only  the  Electorates  and  these  larger 
states  which  like  the  Hesses  or  Mecklenburg-Schwerin  could 
pretend  to  Electoral  rank  were  permitted  to  maintain  their 
independence,  the  process  might  have  been  represented  as  an 
attempt  to  meet  the  true  needs  of  Germany.  But  it  was  not 
the  interests  of  Germany,  but  those  of  the  dynasties  which 
were  being  consulted,  to  say  nothing  of  those  of  the  powerful 
and  none  too  friendly  Western  neighbour  with  whom  the 
decision  really  rested. 

Bavaria  as  the  principal  loser  actually  gained  most.  She 
received  seventeen  Imperial  cities  and  villages  of  which  Ulm 
and  Nordlingen  were  the  most  important,  together  with  twelve 
abbeys  and  priories,  mostly  in  the  P'ranconian  and  Swabian 
Circles.  There  also  fell  to  her  lot  the  Bishoprics  of  Augsburg, 
Freisingen,  Bamberg  and  Wurzburg— which  Prussia  especially 
coveted — and  parts  of  Passau  and  Eichstadt,  which  she  shared 
with  Salzburg.  She  lost  nearly  800,000  subjects,  and  a  revenue 
of  5,800,000  gulden,  but  received  850,000  people  producing 
6,600,000  gulden  of  revenue.  More  than  this,  her  gains  lay 
in  the  most  fertile  and  cultivated  part  of  South  Germany ; 
geographically  they  were  part  and  parcel  of  her,  and  so  helped 
to  round  her  off  and  to  give  her  a  compactness  of  enormous 
advantage.  Plitherto  her  rather  disconnected  condition  had 
given  some  plausibility  to  Thugut’s  schemes  for  annexing  parts 
of  the  Electorate  to  Austria  and  compensating  its  ruler 
elsewhere.  Bavaria  had  now  obtained  the  districts  which  might 
naturally  have  been  selected  as  this  compensation,  and  she  had 
not  had  to  cede  anything  to  Austria.  Her  aggrandisement 
was  a  sufficient  answer  and  barrier  to  Thugut’s  designs. 


462  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1803 


Baden  was  another  state  which  was  treated  on  the  most 
favoured  footing,  thanks  largely  to  Charles  Frederick’s  relation 
to  the  Czar.  The  Margrave  became  an  Elector,  and  his 
dominions  were  enlarged  by  the  Bishopric  of  Constance,  by  the 
portions  of  those  of  Basel,  Strassburg  and  Spires  which  lay  to 
the  East  of  the  Rhine,  and  by  part  of  the  Palatinate,  hitherto 
Bavarian,  including  Heidelberg  and  Mannheim.  A  population 
of  a  quarter  of  a  million  and  a  revenue  of  1,250,000  gulden  was 
an  ample  recompense  for  the  25,000  people  and  250,000  gulden 
lost  with  the  Left  Bank.  Wiirtemberg  also  owed  much  to  her 
Russian  connection.  Nine  Imperial  cities  and  about  as  many 
abbeys  in  Swabia  fell  to  the  lot  of  Duke  Frederick  II,  now 
advanced  to  the  rank  of  Elector.  This  increased  the  number 
of  his  subjects  by  110,000  and  the  annual  revenue  of  his  state 
by  700,000  gulden,  his  losses  only  amounting  to  14,000  people 
and  350,000  gulden  per  annum.  Wiirtemberg,  moreover,  gained 
greatly  in  compactness  through  the  disappearance  of  the  petty 
states  which  had  interrupted  her  continuity. 

Only  one  other  state  in  South-Western  Germany  deserves 
mention.  This  was  the  new  Duchy  erected  out  of  the  Austrian 
possessions  on  the  Rhine  for  the  dispossessed  Duke  of  Modena. 
In  accordance  with  the  treaty  between  Bonaparte  and  the 
Emperor  of  December  26th,  1802,  Duke  Ferdinand  received  the 
Breisgau  and  Ortenau,  Austria  being  compensated  for  her  loss 
by  obtaining  the  secularised  Bishoprics  of  Brixen  and  Trent, 
which  if  somewhat  smaller  and  less  populous,  were  richer, 
easier  to  defend,  and  geographically  much  more  desirable. 

Proceeding  northward,  the  next  state  which  deserves 
mention  is  the  Landgraviate  of  Hesse-Darmstadt,  one  of  the 
states  which  had  profited  most  by  the  redistribution.  In  return 
for  certain  cessions  which  only  amounted  to  some  300  square 
miles  inhabited  by  40,000  people,  the  Landgrave  received  the 
old  Duchy  of  Westphalia,  hitherto  part  of  the  Electorate  of 
Cologne,  a  few  abbeys  and  villages,  the  Free  City  of  Fried  berg, 
and  portions  of  the  Archbishopric  of  Mayence,  of  the  Palatinate 
and  of  the  Bishopric  of  Worms,  a  long  and  narrow  strip  from 
the  Lippe  to  the  Neckar  over  2000  square  miles  in  extent,  with 
120,000  inhabitants  and  a  revenue  of  800,000  gulden. 

Hesse-Cassel,  on  the  other  hand,  received  much  less  territory 
than  she  had  hoped  to  get.  As  the  Landgrave  had  had  no 
possessions  at  all  on  the  Left  Bank,  he  perhaps  obtained  all  he 


THE  RESETTLEMENT  OF  1803 


463 


1803] 

deserved  when  he  got  the  Free  City  of  Gelnhausen  and  the 
dignity  of  Elector.  But  even  this  hardly  consoled  him  for 
seeing  the  ex-Stadtholder  of  Holland,  William  V  of  Orange,  of 
the  Nassau-Dillingen  line,  endowed  out  of  the  districts  for 
which  he  himself  had  hoped  with  a  Principality  composed 
of  the  Bishoprics  of  Fulda  and  Corvey  and  the  Free  City  of 
Dortmund,  a  scattered  holding,  but  amounting  in  all  to  1000 
square  miles  with  a  revenue  of  a  million  gulden.  The  other 
branches  of  the  Nassau  line,  Weilburg  and  Usingen,  received 
between  them  a  considerable  stretch  of  territory  between  the 
Rhine,  the  Main  and  the  Lahn,  formerly  belonging  to  the 
ecclesiastical  Electors,  more  than  equivalent  to  their  losses  on  the 
Left  Bank.1  The  cousins,  Dukes  Frederick  Augustus  of  Usingen 
(1803-1816),  and  Frederick  William  of  Weilburg  (1788-1816), 
had  agreed  to  treat  their  possessions  as  one  Duchy,  and  ruled 
it  in  common. 

A  little  higher  up  the  Main  came  a  new  state,  the  principality 
created  for  Dalberg,  now  as  Arch  Chancellor  of  the  Empire 
and  Primate  of  Germany,  the  only  survivor  of  the  ecclesiastical 
Electors.  Pie  obtained  Aschaffenburg  and  district,  formerly 
parts  of  Mayence  and  Wurzburg,  the  Cities  of  Wetzlar  and 
Ratisbon,  the  secularised  Bishopric  of  Ratisbon,  and  three 
abbeys.  The  revenue  of  600,000  gulden  which  these  possessions 
were  calculated  to  produce  was  to  be  supplemented  by  400,000 
gulden  secured  on  the  tolls  of  the  Rhine.  Dalberg  was  now 
definitely  enrolled  among  the  partisans  of  Bonaparte.  Hitherto 
he  had  endeavoured  to  carry  on  the  old  traditions  of  the  see  of 
Mayence  as  the  leader  among  the  German  Princes,  he  had 
wavered  between  Austria  and  Prussia:  in  1801  he  had  at  first 
struggled  hard  to  save  the  Bishoprics,  but,  realising  this  was 
impossible,  he  devoted  himself  most  zealously  to  furthering  the 
interests  of  Bonaparte,  as  he  saw  in  this  the  only  royal  road  to 
security.2 

In  North-Western  Germany  the  principal  question  of 
interest  was  the  fate  which  would  befall  the  rich  Westphalian 
Bishoprics.  It  was  here  that  Prussia  was  to  find  compensation 
for  her  loss  of  Cleves,  Guelders  and  Mors.  It  was  not  quite 
what  she  had  wanted.  Hardenberg  had  been  very  anxious  to 
see  Bamberg  and  Wurzburg  in  Prussian  hands;  Bonaparte  was 
not  merely  determined  to  keep  Prussia  out  of  P'ranconia,  but  he 

1  Saarbriicken  and  Saarwerden.  2  Cf.  Seeley’s  Stein ,  ii.  365  ff. 


464  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1803 


would  have  liked  to  make  her  take  Mecklenburg  as  her  share, 
transplanting  the  Dukes  of  Schwerin  and  Strelitz  to  Westphalia 
and  Franconia.  But  the  refusal  of  the  Dukes  to  leave  their 
ancestral  dominions  frustrated  this  attempt  to  thrust  Prussia 
back  to  the  East  of  the  Elbe,  and  Bonaparte  was  forced  to  agree 
to  let  her  take  the  Bishoprics  of  Paderborn  and  Hildesheim,  a 
large  part  of  that  of  Munster,  the  town  of  that  name,  the 
Thuringian  possessions  of  Mayence,  Erfurt  and  the  Eichsfeld, 
together  with  six  abbeys  and  three  Cities.  These  amounted  in 
all  to  5000  square  miles  against  a  loss  of  1050,  with  a  popula¬ 
tion  of  500,000  against  a  quarter  of  that  number,  and  a  revenue 
of  four  millions  against  one  of  one  and  a  half.  Rich  and  fertile 
for  the  most  part,  these  acquisitions  gave  Prussia  a  dominant 
position  in  North-Western  Germany,  since  there  was  only  one 
other  state  of  any  importance  in  that  quarter.  This  was 
Hanover,  which  gained  but  little  in  the  redistribution,  having 
to  surrender  her  rights  over  Sayn  -  Altenkirchen  to  Nassau, 
over  Wildeshausen  to  Oldenburg,  to  which  there  also  fell  a 
fragment  of  the  Bishopric  of  Munster.  In  return,  Hanover 
obtained  Osnabriick  permanently.1  Of  other  states  in  this 
part  of  Germany,  Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel  received  a  couple 
of  abbeys,  while  various  minor  dynasties,  notably  Salm  and 
Aremberg,  divided  the  rest  of  Munster.  Saxony  was  uncon¬ 
cerned  in  the  redistribution,  and  the  only  other  features  of 
importance  were  the  survival  of  the  Teutonic  Order,  of  which 
the  Archduke  Charles  was  now  Grand  Master,  and  of  the  Knights 
of  St.  John,  and  the  erection  of  the  Archbishopric  of  Salzburg  into 
an  Electorate  for  the  Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany. 

Minor  potentates  like  the  Princes  of  Isenburg,  Lowenstein, 
and  Thurn  und  Taxis  also  survived  the  storm,  and  were  more  or 
less  fairly  compensated  for  their  losses.  The  compensation  of 
the  Counts  was  a  more  difficult  matter,  since  the  estates  of  the 
Swabian  prelates  did  not  suffice  for  the  purpose,2  while  the 
promise  of  compensation  with  which  the  Imperial  Knights  had 
to  content  themselves  was  at  the  best  a  dubious  guarantee. 

Territorial  changes  so  far-reaching  naturally  involved  great 
political  changes.  Except  that  nothing  new  was  substituted, 
the  Recess  might  be  described  as  the  end  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire.  The  Diet  and  the  Imperial  Chamber  at  Wetzlar 
survived,  but  their  possibility  of  usefulness  was  gone.  What 
1  Cf.  p.  46.  2  Cf.  Haiisser,  ii.  415. 


1803] 


THE  RESETTLEMENT  OF  1803 


465 


relics  of  the  old  federal  institutions  remained,  such  as  the 
Circles,  were  quite  incompatible  with  the  new  arrangements. 
Moreover,  the  disappearance  of  the  ecclesiastical  states  and  the 
transfer  of  votes  to  the  lay  Princes  who  had  received  the 
secularised  prelacies  had  entirely  altered  the  balance  of  power 
in  the  Diet.  The  Protestants  were  now  in  the  majority,  for  of 
the  82  voters  to  which  the  loss  of  the  Left  Bank  and  the  disap¬ 
pearance  of  the  joint  votes  of  the  Rhenish  and  Swabian 
prelates  had  reduced  the  College  of  Princes,  52  were  now 
Protestant  and  30  Catholic.1  One  result  of  the  change  was 
that  Austria’s  influence  in  the  Diet  was  much  decreased.  She 
had  usually  been  able  to  reckon  on  the  clerical  voters,  but  most 
of  their  votes  were  now  in  the  hands  of  her  enemies.2 

With  the  disappearance  of  the  ecclesiastical  states  the 
secular  element  gained  the  upper  hand  in  Germany  completely, 
even  to  the  extent  of  the  subjection  of  ecclesiastics  to  secular 
jurisdiction.  Their  disappearance  was  in  so  far  a  benefit  that 
on  the  whole  they  had  been  in  a  bad  condition,  and  greatly 
needed  the  reforms  they  were  more  likely  to  get  from  their  new 
than  from  their  old  rulers.  Similarly,  not  even  in  their  most 
flourishing  days  had  most  of  the  mediatised  towns  ever  been 
large  enough  to  justify  their  territorial  independence,  and  in  1803 
they  were  for  the  most  part  much  decayed.  If  the  type  of  ad¬ 
ministration  introduced  in  the  new  middle  states  of  Germany 
under  the  influence  of  Napoleonic  France  tended  to  be  oppres¬ 
sively  inelastic  and  on  unduly  rigid  lines,  it  was  still  a  great 
improvement  on  what  it  replaced.  But  what  is  remarkable 
about  these  changes,  is  the  fact  that  they  were  effected  without 
apparently  exciting  any  great  movement  of  public  opinion. 
They  had  been  from  first  to  last  the  work  of  the  dynasties,  not 
of  their  subjects. 

They  were  accepted  with  a  positive  apathy  almost  every¬ 
where.  The  inhabitants  of  the  Left  Bank,  who  since  1797  had 
enjoyed  the  advantages  of  being  regularly  incorporated  in 
France,  showed  no  desire  to  return  to  their  old  allegiance,  and 
accepted  readily  enough  the  theory  of  Gorres,  that  Nature  had 

1  The  vote  of  the  Westphalian  Counts  alternated  ;  this  reckons  it  as  Catholic. 

2  In  the  College  of  Princes,  Prussia  (formerly  8)  had  now  1 1  votes.  Bavaria  (6) 
had  9,  Hanover  (6)  7,  Baden  (3)  6,  the  Ernestine  Saxons  6,  Nassau  (2)  4,  Mecklen- 
burg-Schwerin  3,  Austria  3,  Salzburg  3,  Oldenburg,  Wtirtemburg  and  Hesse* 
Cassel  2  each  ;  four  groups  of  Counts  and  20  single  votes  made  up  the  total 
of  82. 


30 


466  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1803 


created  the  Rhine  to  serve  as  the  boundary  of  France.  Material 
benefits  had  followed  annexation,  and  the  state  of  these 
departments  was  certainly  superior  to  that  of  their  neighbours 
on  the  Eastern  bank  of  the  river. 

The  German  Revolution,  for  so  it  may  be  described,  though 
in  part  the  effect  of  the  great  popular  upheaval  in  France,  was 
not  in  the  least  a  popular  movement.  Instead  of  welding  a 
nation  together  by  destroying  barriers  between  classes  and 
provinces,  the  German  Revolution  reinforced  and  fortified  par¬ 
ticularism.  At  the  same  time,  the  incorporation  of  the  smallest 
states  in  the  larger  was  an  example  which  might  be  pushed 
further.  The  system  of  rounding  off  a  territorial  unit  by  assimil¬ 
ating  the  petty  states  enclosed  in  it  might  be  greatly  extended. 
The  new  grouping  of  Germany  paved  the  way  to  unification,  even 
while  destroying  most  of  the  old  outward  forms  of  German  unity. 
The  greed  of  the  German  Princes  had  destroyed  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire  ;  the  oppression  of  Napoleon  was  to  build  up  in  its  place 
the  German  national  feeling  which  the  Empire  had  suggested 
rather  than  aroused.1 

1  Ilausser’s  chapter  (Book  III.  ch.  vii.),  Der  Reichsdeputations  Hauptschluss , 
has  been  my  principal  authority  for  this  account  of  the  resettlement  of  Germany. 
Compare  also  Fisher,  ch.  ii.,  and  Maps  xi.  and  xii,  in  the  Clarendon  Press  Allas. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 


THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  THIRD  COALITION 

UNSATISFACTORY  as  the  resettlement  of  1803  must  have 
been  to  all  patriotic  Germans,  it  was  not  in  itself  doomed 
to  inevitable  failure.  The  Recess  was  not  carried  out  without 
conflicts  between  the  stronger  Powers — Austria  and  Bavaria,  for 
example,  nearly  came  to  blows  over  Burgau 1 — or  protests  from 
the  weaker  states,  who  appealed  to  the  protection  of  the  First 
Consul.  But  with  Austria  and  Prussia  on  bad  terms,  and  the 
middle  states  bound  to  Napoleon  by  gratitude  for  past  favours 
and  the  stronger  tie  of  hope  of  future  benefits,  an  equilibrium 
seemed  to  have  been  established  in  Germany  which  was  not 
likely  to  be  disturbed  from  within  if  Napoleon  only  took 
reasonable  precautions  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  the 
Continental  Powers.  A  little  moderation,  a  little  regard  for  the 
fears  and  susceptibilities  of  Austria  and  Russia,  such  as  true 
statesmanship  would  surely  have  dictated,  might  have  prevented 
the  growth  of  that  Third  Coalition,  which  is  rather  to  be  ascribed 
to  Napoleon’s  aggressions,  to  his  failure  to  abide  by  the  con¬ 
ditions  he  had  himself  laid  down,  than  to  the  insidious  influence 
of  “Pitt’s  gold.”2  Napoleon  was  himself  Great  Britain’s  best 
recruiting  sergeant  and  the  most  influential  advocate  of  the 
Third  Coalition. 

The  complete  decay  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  is  perhaps 
best  illustrated  by  the  treatment  received  by  the  Imperial 
Knights  during  the  years  1803  and  1804.  That  their  position 
was  anomalous,  that  their  independence  was  theoretically  un¬ 
justifiable,  cannot  be  denied.  The  contention  of  Prussia,  that  the 
privileges  of  the  Knights  were  usurpations  which  had  grown  up 
under  ecclesiastical  rule,  but  which  must  be  restricted  now  that 

1  Cf.  Hausser,  ii.  439. 

2  Cf.  Rose’s  Napoleon ,  vol.  ii.  pp.  5,  6,  and  also  a  volume  of  the  Royal  Historical 
Society’s  Transactions  dealing  with  The  Third  Coalition  against  France :  1804- 
fSog,  edited  by  Dr.  Rose. 


467 


468  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1803 


secular  government  had  replaced  ecclesiastical,1  had  perhaps  a 
little  more  historical  accuracy  than  characterised  the  proclama¬ 
tion  published  by  the  Elector  of  Bavaria  on  October  9th,  1803, 
which  roundly  declared  that  the  Knights  were  mere  local  land¬ 
holders  who  had  thrown  off  the  authority  of  their  overlords. 
Both  views,  however,  were  in  deliberate  violation  of  the  clause 
in  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  which  recognised  the  Knights  as  a 
component  part  of  the  German  polity,  and  guaranteed  their  enjoy¬ 
ment  of  their  rights  and  privileges.2  That  their  territories  were 
on  the  whole  ill-governed,  backward  in  every  way,  an  incubus 
on  trade  and  commerce,  a  menace  to  public  order  and  security 
as  being  the  resort  of  gipsies,  vagrants  and  criminals,  was  more 
or  less  true  ;  but  their  suppression  was  a  matter  which  should 
have  been  effected  by  legal  forms,  by  the  authority  of  the  Diet, 
and  not  merely  by  the  right  of  the  stronger. 

This,  however,  was  what  Bavaria  was  trying  to  do.  The 
Elector  collected  a  committee  of  the  Franconian  Knights,  had 
himself  proclaimed  their  overlord,  ordered  the  magistrates  to 
join  the  Electoral  courts  of  justice,  and  directed  that  the  taxes 
due  to  the  Knights  should  be  paid  into  the  Electoral  coffers. 
The  committee  was  compelled  to  admit  themselves  to  be  the 
Elector’s  subjects,  and  to  pay  to  him  the  sums  hitherto  paid  to 
the  Emperor. 

His  action  found  many  imitators,  foremost  among  them 
Hesse-Cassel,  Hesse-Darmstadt  and  the  Princes  of  the  House  of 
Nassau.  Petty  Princes  like  the  rulers  of  Leiningen  and  Isenburg 
were  not  restrained  from  using  violence  against  their  defenceless 
neighbours  by  the  reflection  that  their  own  possessions  might 
with  equal  justification  be  subjected  to  a  similar  process. 
Saxony  and  Baden  alone  refrained  from  the  game  of  “  grab,” 
which  in  some  places,  where  more  than  one  claimant  attempted 
to  seize  the  same  village,  resulted  in  bloodshed.  In  vain  the 
Knights  appealed  to  Napoleon.  He  would  not  alienate  more 
useful  clients  for  the  sake  of  these  helpless  applicants  for  his 
protection.  The  Emperor,  however,  did  bestir  himself  upon 
their  behalf,  and  an  Imperial  Commission  of  the  Aulic  Council 
pronounced  in  favour  of  the  Knights  (Jan.  1804),  and  ordered 
restoration  of  the  previous  state  of  things.  The  Emperor,  the 
Arch  Chancellor,  Baden  and  Saxony  were  appointed  guardians 
of  the  rights  of  the  Knights. 

1  Cf.  Haiisser,  ii.  485. 


2  Cf.  Turner,  p.  122. 


i8o3]  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  THIRD  COALITION  469 


Bavaria  now  found  herself  isolated,  for  Napoleon  was  not 
disposed  to  intervene  on  her  behalf  and  to  embroil  himself  with 
Austria  just  when  the  unexpected  firmness  of  the  Addington 
Cabinet  had  involved  him,  before  he  was  ready,  in  a  fresh 
war  with  England.  Accordingly  on  February  19th  the  Elector 
intimated  to  the  Diet  his  willingness  to  withdraw.  His  action 
had  been  somewhat  over-hasty,  but  it  was  typical  of  the  way  in 
which  the  middle  states  were  seeking  to  assert  their  authority 
over  their  new  acquisitions,  and  to  build  up  on  a  small  scale 
autocracies  after  the  Napoleonic  model.  Bureaucratic  centralisa¬ 
tion,  an  extensive  and  active  system  of  police,  complete  control 
over  the  finances,  uniformity  in  organisation  and  administration, 
were  the  objects  aimed  at.  When  the  interests  of  the  subject 
were  the  chief  care  of  the  ruler,  as  was  the  case  in  Baden,  where 
education  was  fostered  by  the  revival  of  Heidelberg  University, 
and  all  possible  means  were  taken  to  promote  good  government, 
this  had  a  good  side.  In  Wiirtemberg  one  sees  the  reverse  side 
of  the  shield,  a  caricature  of  the  Napoleonic  system,  an  oppressive 
rule,  sacrificing  the  interests  of  the  governed  to  the  whim  of  a 
selfish  ruler,  heedless  of  his  subjects.  But  it  is  in  Bavaria  that 
one  has  the  most  typical  case  of  the  conflict  between  the  old 
and  the  new.  In  the  last  days  of  Elector  Charles  Theodore, 
things  had  not  been  well  with  Bavaria.  Mistresses,  monks 
and  favourites  had  held  sway  over  an  extravagant,  corrupt  and 
inefficient  government.  Taxation  had  been  oppressive,  the 
debt  heavy,  trade  and  industry  had  languished  under  the 
blighting  influence  of  monopolies  and  privilege.  Justice  was 
conspicuous  by  its  absence,  the  administration  was  at  once 
oppressive  and  lax.  Education  was  neglected,  superstition 
universal.  With  Maximilian  Joseph  a  new  era  had  begun. 
Modern,  alert,  and  if  rather  lacking  in  force  of  character  still 
genuinely  anxious  to  introduce  reforms,  he  found  a  congenial 
minister  in  the  gifted  Savoyard  Montgelas.  Together  they 
assailed  privilege,  priestcraft  and  feudalism,  introduced  reforms 
into  the  Army,  the  Church,  the  administration  of  justice  and  of 
police,  into  the  position  of  the  peasants  and  the  rights  of  the 
landowners.  It  was  an  assistance  to  them  that  Bavaria’s 
acquisitions  in  1803  were  rich  and  in  many  important  respects 
ahead  of  the  rest  of  Germany.  Some  indication  of  the  liberal 
tendencies  of  the  Elector  and  his  minister  is  given  by  their  grant 
of  toleration  to  Protestants  (Sept.  1800),  by  their  suppression 


470  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1803 


of  superfluous  monasteries,  by  their  refusal  to  allow  Franciscans 
and  Capuchins  to  recruit  their  numbers,  by  their  assuming 
control  of  Church  property,  and  placing  all  schools  in  the  hands 
of  the  State. 

Meanwhile  Napoleon,  not  content  to  let  well  alone,  was 
making  peace  as  impossible  for  the  Continental  Powers  as  he 
had  already  made  it  for  Great  Britain.  Plis  interference  in  the 
internal  affairs  of  Holland  (Sept.  1801)  and  of  Switzerland 
(Sept.  1802),  his  annexations  of  Piedmont  and  of  the  Valais,  his 
election  as  First  Consul  of  the  Italian  Republic  (Jan.  1802), 
could  not  but  excite  unrest  and  uneasiness  at  Vienna  and  at 
St.  Petersburg,  even  if  they  failed  to  bring  home  to  the  dull  mind 
of  Frederick  William  III  the  dangers  of  the  path  he  had  chosen. 
And  yet  he  had  seen  nearer  home  an  act  “just  such  as  Prussia 
might  have  entreated  Napoleon  to  commit  in  order  to  give  her 
an  occasion  of  showing  the  difference  between  a  policy  of  non¬ 
intervention  and  a  policy  of  mere  passiveness.”  1  This  was  the 
French  occupation  of  Hanover. 

As  in  1756  so  in  1803  Hanover  was  the  link  that  bound  the 
maritime  and  colonial  war  between  England  and  France  to  the 
affairs  of  the  Continent.  Through  Hanover  Napoleon  hoped  to 
strike  at  England,  little  though  either  George  III  or  his  people 
concerned  themselves  with  the  fate  of  the  monarch’s  German 
subjects.  But  as  an  inlet  by  which  English  commerce  might 
find  its  way  into  Europe,  Hanover  had  its  importance  even  to 
England,  and  the  occupation  of  Hanover  was  the  first  step  in 
that  policy  of  controlling  the  Continent  in  order  to  keep  out 
English  trade  which  led  Napoleon  on  to  Moscow. 

At  the  end  of  May  1803  20,000  French  troops  under  General 
Mortier  crossed  the  frontier  of  Hanover.  The  army  of  the 
Electorate  was  neither  very  large  nor  very  efficient.  Since  the 
Peace  of  Basel,  Hanover  had  enjoyed  the  shelter  of  the  “line  of 
demarcation,”  and  the  army  had  been  reduced  accordingly. 
Still,  if  the  administration  had  chosen  to  make  a  stand,  the 
Hanoverian  troops  might  have  resisted  as  weak  a  corps  as 
Mortier’ s  with  good  prospects  of  success.  But  the  Electorate 
was  under  the  lax  and  placid  rule  of  a  bureaucratic  aristocracy, 
too  mild  to  arouse  popular  discontent  and  make  the  invaders 
welcome,  too  slack  and  inert  to  arouse  popular  resistance  based 
on  patriotic  feeling.  Thus  no  preparations  for  resistance  were 

1  Seeley,  i.  230. 


1 8 o 3]  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  THIRD  COALITION  471 


made  till  the  invaders  were  on  the  move.  Some  trusted  to  the 
protection  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  some  to  the  equally  futile 
Prussian  guarantee  of  neutrality. 

As  early  as  March  1803  Napoleon  had'  sent  Duroc  to  Berlin 
to  explain  that  to  secure  the  flank  of  the  Grand  Army  against 
an  English  attack  he  would  have  to  occupy  Hanover.  Rather 
feebly  Prussia  sought  to  dissuade  Napoleon  from  a  step  so 
inimical  to  her  interests,  so  derogatory  to  her  prestige,  so 
detrimental  to  her  trade,  since  it  was  certain  that  England 
would  reply  to  the  occupation  by  a  blockade  of  the  Elbe  and 
Weser.  But  while  Prussia  hesitated  and  attempted  to  mediate 
between  England  and  France,  while  the  Hanoverian  ministry 
displayed  equal  hesitation  and  indecision  and  only  definitely 
appealed  to  Prussia  when  it  was  too  late,  Napoleon  carried  out 
his  plan.  It  seems  probable  that  had  Prussia  taken  Lord 
Hawkesbury’s  hint  to  Jacobi  and,  as  in  1801,  forestalled  Napoleon 
by  herself  occupying  Hanover,  England  would  have  taken  no 
official  notice  of  what  after  all  did  not  concern  her,  while 
Napoleon  would  most  likely  have  acquiesced  rather  than  alien¬ 
ate  Prussia.  But  prompt  and  decided  action  of  any  nature  was 
not  to  be  expected  from  Prussia.  At  last  (May  25th)  a  proposal 
was  adopted  by  which  Russia  and  Prussia  were  to  guarantee  the 
neutrality  of  Hanover,  a  payment  being  made  by  the  Electorate 
to  France,  and  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  acting  as  Stadtholder ; 
but  by  this  time  Mortier’s  men  were  on  the  point  of  crossing 
the  frontier,  and  Talleyrand  informed  Lucchesini  that  Napoleon 
intended  to  occupy  “  the  British  possessions  on  the  Continent,” 
though  he  hinted  that  his  master  was  well  disposed  towards  a 
Franco-Prussian  alliance  which  might  leave  Hanover  in  Prussian 
hands. 

It  was  on  May  30th  that  Mortier  entered  Hanover.  He 
met  with  no  opposition.  A  levee  en  masse  had  been  ordered 
but  countermanded,  and  the  Hanoverian  troops  fell  back  on 
Suhlingen,  while  emissaries  from  the  Privy  Council  attempted 
to  negotiate  with  Mortier.  Neither  civil  nor  military  authorities 
had  any  idea  of  resisting,  and  on  June  3rd  a  Convention  was 
signed  at  Suhlingen  which  placed  the  whole  Electorate,  with 
its  fortresses  and  revenues,  at  the  disposal  of  the  French.  The 
Hanoverian  army  undertook  to  retire  across  the  Elbe  and 
not  to  bear  arms  against  France  unless  exchanged.  This, 
however,  did  not  satisfy  Napoleon.  He  insisted  that  the  army 


472  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1803 


should  surrender  as  prisoners  of  war,  wishing  to  exchange 
them  against  the  French  sailors  on  the  English  prison-hulks 
whom  his  fleet  so  sorely  needed.  The  British  ministry 
not  unaturally  declined  to  meet  his  wishes.  Thereupon  he 
refused  to  ratify  the  Convention,  and  bade  Mortier  disarm  the 
Hanoverian  troops.  To  this  Wallmoden,  the  Hanoverian 
commander,  would  not  agree,  and  for  a  time  it  seemed  as 
though  Hanover  would  after  all  resist.  But  the  troops  were 
in  bad  condition,  their  discipline  was  relaxed,  they  did  not 
understand  what  was  happening,  and  when  the  Estates  of 
Calenberg  -  Celle  demanded  that  the  troops  should  submit, 
Wallmoden  gladly  grasped  at  this  excuse  for  capitulation. 
Mortier  waived  the  demand  that  the  men  should  become 
prisoners  of  war,  and  the  troops  then  laid  down  their  arms 
and  dispersed  to  their  homes  (July  5th).  No  small  number 
of  them,  however,  keenly  sensitive  to  the  disgrace  to  the 
honour  of  their  army,  took  advantage  of  the  fact  that  the 
oath  of  neutrality  had  not  been  administered  to  them  to  escape 
through  Holstein  to  England,  there  to  be  formed  into  that 
King’s  German  Legion  which  was  to  do  such  good  service  to 
the  cause  of  England  and  of  Europe,  which  was  to  serve  in 
Denmark  and  in  Portugal,  in  Sicily  and  in  Spain,  and  to  end 
a  glorious  career  by  playing  a  prominent  part  in  the  “  crowning 
mercy  ”  of  Waterloo.1 

In  this  way  Hanover  passed  into  the  power  of  France: 
the  first  district  of  Germany  East  of  the  Rhine  to  suffer  the 
lot  of  subjugation  to  Napoleon,  which  sooner  or  later  was 
meted  out  to  the  whole  country.  It  exchanged  a  government 
which,  with  all  its  faults,  could  not  be  called  exacting  or 
tyrannical,  for  the  heavy  burden  of  a  military  occupation  aimed 
at  draining  dry  the  resources  of  the  country.  Not  much 
change  was  made  in  the  administration,  but  an  Executive 
Commission  was  appointed  on  which  fell  the  task  of  wring¬ 
ing  out  of  the  unfortunate  Electorate  the  sums  Napoleon 
demanded.  The  normal  annual  revenue  of  the  country  was 
little  over  12,000,000  francs,  but  nearly  18,000,000  were  extorted 
between  July  5th  and  December  23rd,  1803.  Moreover,  the 
French  troops  had  to  be  supplied  and  given  quarters  at  the 

1  Beamish’s  History  of  the  King’s  German  Legion  contains  a  full  and  interesting 
account  of  the  Legion  and  its  services  :  for  the  French  occupation  of  Hanover,  see 
Fisher,  ch.  iii.,  and  England  and  Hanover ,  pp.  203  fif. 


1803]  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  THIRD  COALITION  473 


expense  of  the  inhabitants.  In  June  1804,  when  Bernadotte 
replaced  Mortier,  matters  improved  slightly.  His  yoke  was 
rather  milder,  his  extortions  less  crushing,  the  discipline  he 
maintained  rather  better.  Yet  even  so  the  Electorate  was 
burdened  and  taxed  unmercifully,  while  the  threat  of  a  like 
fate  wrung  from  the  neighbouring  city  of  Hamburg  an  unwilling 
“loan”  of  three  million  marks  in  November  1803. 

From  the  other  Powers  of  Germany  no  redress  was  to  be 
looked  for  by  the  unfortunate  Hanoverians.  The  Emperor 
accepted  the  occupation  as  a  fact :  he  was  as  ready  to  see 
the  French  there  as  the  Prussians.  Prussia  meanwhile  put 
up  with  the  check  as  best  she  might.  She  did,  indeed,  send 
Lombard  to  Brussels  (July  1803)  to  ask  Napoleon’s  intentions 
and  complain  about  his  seizure  of  Cuxhaven,  which  belonged 
to  Hamburg.  The  mission  only  committed  Prussia  more  and 
more  to  France.  Lombard  returned  declaring  that  Napoleon 
only  meant  to  respect  the  rights  of  neutrals,  and  that  his 
action  had  been  forced  upon  him  by  England’s  illegalities.1 
A  proposal  made  by  Prussia  to  get  Russia  to  guarantee  the 
neutrality  of  the  Continent  so  as  to  secure  Napoleon  against 
the  foundation  of  a  new  coalition  by  British  gold,  Napoleon 
rejected.  He  had  no  wish  to  see  Russia  and  Prussia  on  good 
terms,  but  intended  to  keep  Prussia  isolated  and  so  at  his 
mercy.  It  was  a  sense  of  this  isolation  which  caused  Prussia 
in  the  course  of  1804  to  make  tentative  efforts  to  build  up  a 
new  League  of  Princes  on  the  lines  of  the  Fiirstenbund  of 
1785.  The  idea  came  to  nothing;  for  Duke  Charles  Augustus 
of  Saxe-Weimar,  when  sounded  by  Prince  William  of  Brunswick, 
did  not  prove  enthusiastic,  while  Prussia  was  equally  unwilling 
to  let  the  Duke  of  Weimar  draw  her  into  a  league  with  Austria. 
The  relations  of  the  two  leading  Powers  of  Germany  were  as 
usual  strained,  and  not  even  the  outrage  on  the  Empire,  on 
treaty  rights,  international  law  and  public  opinion  involved  in 
the  abduction  of  the  Due  d’Enghien  (March  1804)  from  the 
shelter  of  his  refuge  at  Baden,  could  make  them  unite  to 
protect  the  Empire  against  so  flagrant  and  forcible  an  outrage. 
Indeed,  it  is  a  striking  commentary  on  the  state  of  Germany 
that  the  most  strenuous  protests  should  have  come  not  from 
Austria  or  Bavaria  or  Prussia,  but  from  England,  Russia 

1  She  had  blockaded  the  mouths  of  the  Elbe  and  Weser,  and  the  trade  of 
Hamburg  and  Bremen  was  feeling  the  effects  of  the  blockade. 


474  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1804 


and  Sweden.  The  conduct  of  the  Elector  of  Baden  was 

pusillanimous  and  ignominious  in  the  extreme.  Far  from 
bringing  the  case  before  the  Diet  himself,  he  endeavoured  to 
prevent  Russia  from  moving  in  the  matter  at  all1  (July), 

asking  the  Diet  to  let  it  drop  lest  a  greater  evil  should  follow. 
Hanover,  however,  refused  to  do  this,  and  called  on  the 
Emperor  to  demand  satisfaction  and  redress  for  the  double 

breach  of  the  rights  of  the  Empire  committed  by  Napoleon 
in  this  matter  and  in  the  occupation  of  Hanover.  To  avoid 
having  to  vote  on  the  question,  most  of  the  representatives  left 
Ratisbon  before  the  end  of  July.2 

Not  long  after  the  abduction  and  murder  of  the  only 
member  of  the  House  of  Bourbon  on  whom  he  could  con¬ 

veniently  lay  his  hands,  Napoleon  assumed  the  Imperial  title 
(May  1 8th,  1804).  This  was  not  quite  to  the  liking  of  Austria. 
The  new  title  was  felt  to  reflect  in  some  way  on  that  of  Francis. 
It  seemed  to  hint  at  a  new  competitor  for  the  Imperial  throne 
quite  capable  of  ending  the  Hapsburg  monopoly.  Moreover, 
the  changes  of  1803  had  given  the  Protestants  a  clear  majority 
in  the  Electoral  College,  and  it  was  to  make  certain  that  in 
some  form  or  other  the  Imperial  title  should  continue  in  his 
line  that  Francis  resolved  upon  the  erection  of  his  own 
immediate  dominions  into  an  hereditary  Empire.3  It  was  on 
August  14th,  1804,  that  the  decree  was  published  by  which 
this  was  done :  but  not  before  negotiations  for  the  reciprocal 
recognition  of  the  two  titles  had  for  some  time  been  keeping 
Paris  and  Vienna  in  constant  correspondence.4 

1  Russia  at  first  seems  to  have  contemplated  an  immediate  rupture  with  France, 
but  decided  in  favour  of  the  “  more  circumspect”  course  of  appealing  to  the  members 
of  the  Empire  to  co-operate  with  the  Czar  in  “  restraining  the  ambition  of  France” 
and  defending  their  rights  and  liberties  ( The  Third  Coalition ,  p.  5).  However,  as 
Napoleon  took  offence  at  Russia’s  protests  against  the  execution  of  the  Due 
d’Enghien,  and  complained  bitterly  that  Russia  was  interfering  in  matters  which 
did  not  concern  her,  relations  rapidly  became  strained,  and  in  August  1804  the 
Russian  Minister  at  Paris,  after  presenting  an  ultimatum  with  the  terms  of  which 
Napoleon  altogether  failed  to  comply,  left  France  altogether.  This  rupture  of 
diplomatic  relations  did  not,  however,  immediately  lead  to  war.  Ibid.  pp.  30-32. 

2  Cf.  Fisher,  pp.  67-75  ;  Haiisser,  ii.  pp.  497  fif. 

3  Some  contemporary  documents  use  the  title  “the  Emperor  of  Germany”  in 
speaking  of  Francis  II  (cf.  The  Third  Coalition ,  passim),  but  it  was  not,  of  course, 
his  official  title. 

4  Austria’s  recognition  of  Napoleon’s  Imperial  title  gave  much  offence  to  the 
Czar  ( The  Third  Coalition,  p.  36),  and  despite  the  efforts  of  England  to  promote  a 
good  understanding  between  Vienna  and  St.  Petersburg,  Russia  at  first  actually 


i8o4]  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  THIRD  COALITION  475 


Partly  with  the  object  of  publishing  to  the  world  his  claim 
to  be  regarded  as  the  successor  of  Charlemagne,  partly  in  order 
to  acquaint  himself  thoroughly  with  his  new  Rhenish  provinces, 
Napoleon  undertook  in  September  1804  a  tour  through  the 
recent  annexations  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine.  At  Aix- 
la-Chapelle,  Charlemagne’s  old  capital,  he  received  the  Austrian 
envoy  sent  to  formally  recognise  the  new  Imperial  title. 
Thence  he  proceeded  by  Cologne  (Sept.  13th)  to  Mayence, 
where  he  was  greeted  by  a  large  and  subservient  assembly 
of  German  Princes  and  envoys,  including  two  Electors.  The 
presence  of  the  Elector  of  Baden  was  a  lurid  commentary  on 
that  Prince’s  attitude  in  the  matter  of  the  Due  d’Enghien ;  the 
attendance  of  Dalberg  in  the  city  of  Mayence  was  a  humiliating 
proof  of  the  great  change  in  that  prelate’s  policy  since  the 
days  when  he  had  desired  to  reconcile  the  Furstenbund  of 
1785  to  the  Hapsburgs,  even  more  since  the  days  when  he 
had  urged  Archduke  Charles  to  assume  the  powers  of  a 
dictator  over  Germany.  Formerly  the  stoutest  champion  of 
the  Empire,  Dalberg  had  at  least  made  a  complete  change 
when  he  turned  his  coat,  and  Napoleon  had  not  now  a  keener 
supporter.  The  see  of  Mayence  had  always  been  associated 
with  the  Imperial  traditions  ever  since  the  days  of  Elector 
Berthold  of  Henneberg,1  and  even  before  his  day,  and  Dalberg 
was  now  ready  to  continue  his  advocacy  of  Imperialism,  but 
with  Napoleon  as  his  Emperor. 

The  meeting  at  Mayence  though  indicative  of  future 
developments,  did  not  see  any  definite  steps  towards  the 
organisation  of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine.  It  served  to 
familiarise  the  minor  Princes  of  Germany  with  the  notion  of 
a  German  union  under  the  benevolent  protection  of  France, 
which  would  secure  them  against  the  aggressions  of  Austria 
and  Prussia.  Such  a  plan  had  indeed  been  suggested  earlier 
in  the  year  by  Waitz,  the  principal  minister  of  the  Elector  of 
Hesse,  but  it  had  been  put  aside  by  Napoleon  as  likely  to 
interfere  with  the  Prussian  alliance  he  was  anxious  to  secure. 

refused  to  recognise  the  title  of  “Hereditary  Emperor  of  Austria”  (p.  54);  this 
with  differences  of  opinion  as  to  the  policy  to  be  pursued  towards  Turkey  (p.  47), 
and  the  reluctance  of  the  Austrian  ministers,  more  especially  of  Cobenzl,  the  leading 
man  amongst  them,  to  undertake  the  risks  of  defying  Napoleon,  kept  the  two  Courts 
from  forming  that  alliance  by  which  England  hoped  to  rally  Europe  against 
Napoleon  until  1805  was  far  advanced. 

1  Cf.  C.M.H.  i.  pp.  300  ff. 


476  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1804 


Napoleon  was  anxious  for  a  Prussian  alliance,  because  he  was 
well  aware  of  the  growing  hostility  of  Russia ; 1  nor  could  he 
overlook  the  fact  that,  though  men  like  Cobenzl  might  be  well 
disposed  to  him,  or  at  least  so  much  afraid  of  his  displeasure 
that  they  would  do  nothing  to  provoke  it,  the  old  Austrian 
aristocracy  with  all  its  traditions  could  not  so  readily  accept 
the  mushroom  Bonapartist  Empire,  or  forget  what  Austria  had 
suffered  at  the  Corsican  upstart’s  hands.  In  view  of  the 
hostility  of  Austria  and  Russia,  it  would  be  most  unwise  to 
alienate  Prussia.  England  must  not  be  allowed  to  unite  all 
the  three  leading  Continental  Powers  in  a  great  coalition. 

But  as  long  as  Prussia  maintained  her  policy  of  neutrality, 
Napoleon  could  not  feel  quite  secure  of  her.  Though  recent 
events  had  rather  shaken  his  belief  in  passive  neutrality, 
IAederick  William  III  lacked  the  decision,  the  courage  and 
the  energy  for  definitely  throwing  in  his  lot  either  with  France, 
as  Haugwitz  and  Lombard  on  the  whole  advised,  or  with  her 
enemies,  whose  cause  was  pleaded  by  the  patriotic  Queen 
Louise  and  by  the  King’s  enterprising  cousin,  Prince  Louis 
Ferdinand.  He  still  clung  to  his  idea  of  a  Russo-Prussian 
guarantee  of  the  neutrality  of  the  Continent,  in  return  for 
which  Napoleon  would  evacuate  Hanover.  He  thus  quite 
overlooked  the  fact  that  Russia  was  already  more  than  half¬ 
way  to  an  alliance  with  England,  and  much  more  disposed  to 
force  Prussia  into  line  with  the  rest  of  Europe  by  threats  and 
menaces  than  to  buy  her  support  with  concessions  ;2  that  it  was 
most  unlikely  that  Napoleon  would  give  up  so  valuable  a  pawn 
in  the  diplomatic  game  as  Hanover,  and  that  the  neutrality 
Prussia  offered  was  not  of  the  least  value  to  France.  What 
Napoleon  wanted  was  to  force  Prussia,  like  the  middle  states, 
into  an  alliance  with  him  which  should  keep  Austria  and 

1  Russia  had  begun  negotiating  with  Great  Britain  as  far  back  as  November 
1803,  when  the  occupation  of  Naples  by  French  troops  seemed  to  herald  French 
intervention  in  the  Morea  and  attempts  on  the  integrity  of  Turkey  (cf.  Rose, 
Napoleonic  Studies ,  pp.  364-367)  ;  but  her  anxiety  to  avoid  throwing  Austria  or 
Prussia  or  the  minor  German  states  into  the  arms  of  France  by  a  too  precipitate 
declaration  of  policy  (  The  Tim'd  Coalition  (R.H.S.),  p.  12),  had  prevented  any 
immediate  action  resulting  from  the  negotiations.  England  and  Russia  were,  how¬ 
ever,  in  substantial  accord  as  to  the  necessity  of  putting  some  check  on  Napoleon’s 
aggressions. 

2  Cf.  The  Tim'd  Coalition ,  pp.  101  ff.  :  England  seems  to  have  been  far  keener 
about  securing  Prussia’s  friendship  ;  Russia,  to  have  thought  it  would  be  easier  to 
intimidate  than  to  encourage  Frederick  William  into  an  alliance. 


1804]  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  THIRD  COALITION  477 


Russia  in  check  and  abate  their  bellicose  tendencies.  But  he 
was  rather  too  impatient:  by  trying  to  force  Frederick  William 
to  a  decision  he  alarmed  that  essentially  deliberate  monarch, 
who  was  endeavouring  to  play  Russia  and  France  off  against 
each  other.  The  Czar,  however,  losing  patience  with  Prussia’s 
indecision,  did  not  attempt  to  conceal  his  opinion  of  the 
Prussian  King’s  policy,  and  Alexander’s  openly  expressed 
contempt  made  Frederick  William  incline  towards  P'rance. 
This  disposition  received  something  of  a  check  through  a 
fresh  outrage  on  the  part  of  Napoleon,  the  seizure  of  Sir 
George  Rumbold,  the  British  agent  at  Hamburg  (Oct.  24th, 
1804).  This  violation  of  neutral  territory  was  possibly  partly 
intended  as  a  reply  to  Russia’s  protests  about  the  abduction  of 
d’Enghien  j1  anyhow  it  was  an  insult  to  Frederick  William,  who 
was  Director  of  the  Lower  Saxon  Circle,  and  for  once  he  showed 
some  decision.  His  indignant  protests  induced  Napoleon  to 
release  Rumbold  as  a  concession,  not  to  international  law,  but 
to  the  King  of  Prussia.  For  the  moment  Napoleon  did  not 
wish  to  play  into  the  hands  of  the  bellicose  party  in  Prussia, 
which  seemed  to  have  gained  ground  by  recent  changes  in 
the  ministry.  During  the  summer  of  1804  Haugwitz,  without 
actually  resigning,  handed  over  the  control  of  the  Foreign 
Office  to  Hardenberg  and  retired  to  his  Silesian  estates.  From 
time  to  time,  however,  he  returned  to  Berlin  and  took  part  in 
ministerial  conferences,  a  most  anomalous  arrangement  which 
led  to  great  confusion.  The  expected  change  in  foreign  policy 
did  not  follow.  Hardenberg,  much  as  he  distrusted  Napoleon, 
was  not  prepared  to  advocate  a  complete  change,  and  Prussia 
continued  her  futile  efforts  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  both 
sides. 

But  by  this  time  war  was  becoming  inevitable.  Napoleon’s 
repeated  infringements  of  the  Peace  of  Luneville  had  convinced 
Alexander  of  the  unwisdom  of  the  policy  which  had  assisted 
Napoleon  to  rise  to  so  dangerous  a  strength.  The  occupation 
of  Naples  and  Hanover  in  order  to  exclude  British  goods  from 
the  Continent,  the  spectacle  of  Spain’s  dependence  on  the 
Emperor, —  she  became  involved  in  Anglo-French  war  in 
December  1804, — above  all,  the  murder  of  the  Due  d’Enghien 
further  excited  his  resentment.  In  August  1804  the  Russian 
Ambassador  at  Paris,  Count  Oubril,  had  demanded  his  pass- 

1  Cf.  The  Third  Coalition ,  p.  57. 


478  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1804 


ports,  and  though  war  had  not  immediately  followed  it  could 
not  be  long  delayed.  Nor  was  Austria  any  better  pleased 
with  the  situation.  Only  the  memories  of  Marengo  and 
Hohenlinden  and  the  great  need  for  the  reorganisation  of  army 
administration  and  finances  acted  as  a  check  on  bellicose 
leanings.1  Archduke  Charles  was  too  well  aware  of  the  defi¬ 
ciencies  of  the  army  to  desire  war,  and  Cobenzl’s  knowledge  of 
the  internal  condition  of  the  realm  made  him  equally  pacific. 
Yet  Napoleon’s  actions  in  Italy  and  elsewhere  could  not  fail 
to  arouse  resentment  and  suspicion,  and  in  November  1804 
Stadion  concluded  on  behalf  of  Austria  a  defensive  alliance 
with  Russia,  providing  for  the  co-operation  of  Austria  and 
Russia  in  case  of  further  outrages  by  Napoleon.  This  was 
followed  (April  nth,  1805)  by  an  Anglo-Russian  treaty,  the 
objects  of  which  were  the  expulsion  of  the  French  from  North 
Germany,  the  restoration  of  the  independence  of  Holland, 
Switzerland  and  Italy,  and  the  restoration  of  the  House  of 
Savoy.  Sweden  had  already  concluded  similar  compacts  with 
both  Powers,  with  England  in  December  1804,  with  Russia  in 
January  1805  ;  but  the  rather  inconsiderate  zeal  of  Gustavus  IV 
threatened  to  embroil  him  with  Prussia  over  Pomerania,2  and 
so  to  impede  the  attempts  of  the  Coalition  to  enlist  Prussia  on 
their  side. 

To  relate  the  action  and  discuss  the  motives  of  Frederick 
William  and  his  advisers  is  a  monotonous  task.  Hardenberg, 
Haugwitz  and  Frederick  William  were  all  pessimistic  as  to  the 
Coalition’s  chances  of  overthrowing  Napoleon.  Russia’s  ill- 
timed  efforts  to  force  Prussia  and  Bavaria  into  an  anti-French 
alliance  had  only  the  opposite  effect.  Prussia  hoped  to  combine 
the  advantages  of  both  policies  by  adopting  neither,  and 
Napoleon’s  skilful  dangling  of  the  bait  of  Hanover  before  her 
kept  her  undecided.  About  the  end  of  July  1805  he  replied  to 
Lucchesini’s  complaints  about  his  recent  action  in  Italy  by  an 


1  The  despatches  of  Lord  Harrowby,  Sir  J.  B.  Warren,  and  others,  printed  in 

Dr.  Rose’s  Third  Coalition  (R.H.S.),  contain  frequent  references  to  the  poverty  and 
financial  exhaustion  of  Austria  as  the  main  reason  for  her  reluctance  to  resume  the 
struggle  against  Napoleon.  It  is  also  clear  that  Cobenzl’s  influence  was  steadily 
exercised  against  the  “forward  party,”  while  the  bad  relations  between  Archduke 
Charles  and  Thugut  forbade  the  recall  to  office  of  that  energetic  minister,  who, 
with  all  his  faults,  at  least  was  the  sincere  and  convinced  opponent  of  Napoleon  ; 
e.g.  p.  69.  , 

2  Cf.  Haiisser,  ii.  543. 


iSo5]  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  THIRD  COALITION  479 


offer  of  Hanover,1  appealing  not  merely  to  Frederick  Williams 
greed,  but  to  his  love  of  peace  also  by  declaring  that  Prussia’s 
open  adhesion  to  the  side  of  France  would  probably  keep  the 
Coalition  from  making  war.  Even  Idardenberg  was  caught  by 
this  prospect  of  plunder.  The  Duke  of  Brunswick,2  believing  that 
a  Franco-Prussian  alliance  would  dissolve  the  Coalition  at  once, 
favoured  the  annexation  of  Hanover,  and  when  Duroc  came  to 
Berlin  at  the  end  of  August  1805  all  indications  pointed  to  the 
success  of  his  mission.  The  dictatorial  and  minatory  tone 
Russia  was  assuming  had  offended  Prussia,  and  seemed  likely 
to  drive  her  into  an  alliance  with  Napoleon.  But  even  at  this 
late  hour,  when  the  Grand  Army  was  already  well  on  its  way 
from  the  Channel  to  the  Danube,  Frederick  William  clung  to 
the  idea  of  mediating  between  the  contending  forces  and  so 
averting  war.  The  natural  result  of  his  culpable  indecision 
was  that  neither  side  would  listen  to  his  proposals,  and  that 
both  treated  Prussia  “  with  a  reckless  contempt  which  shows 
that  nothing  was  hoped,  and  at  the  same  time  nothing  was 
feared  from  her  wooden  immobility.”  3 

Meanwhile  the  war  had  come.  The  announcement  in  the 
Moniteur  of  March  17th,  1805,  that  the  Italian  Republic  had 
offered  the  Iron  Crown  of  Lombardy  to  Napoleon,  was  natur¬ 
ally  interpreted  as  a  deliberate  challenge  to  the  Coalition. 
The  conversion  of  the  Batavian  Republic  into  a  kingdom  for 
Louis  Bonaparte,  the  grant  of  Piombio  and  Lucca  to  Elise 
Bonaparte  as  a  Principality,  the  annexation  of  Parma,  Piacenza, 
Guastalla  and  the  Ligurian  Republic  (June  9th)  to  France, 
merely  added  fuel  to  the  flames.  Even  Prussia’s  placid 
acquiescence  in  Napoleon’s  aggressions  received  a  shock 
which  caused  the  Cabinet  of  Berlin  to  recognise  the  possibility 
that  it  might  find  it  necessary  to  change  its  policy  with  regard 
to  France.4  The  Russian  envoy  who  was  on  his  way  to  lay  the 
last  demands  of  the  Allies  before  Napoleon  received  orders  from 
the  Czar  bidding  him  suspend  his  journey.  Austria’s  hesita¬ 
tions  gave  place  to  a  firmer  and  more  resolute  tone  and  to  a 
protest  against  the  last  outrage  on  the  liberties  of  Europe.  To 

1  Cf.  Bailleu,  Preussen  und  Frankreich ,  vol.  ii.  pp.  354  ff. 

2  Cf.  Halisser,  ii.  600  ff.  3  Seeley,  i.  235. 

4  Cf.  Novosilzov  to  Woronzov  (quoted  in  The  Third  Coalition ,  p.  1S7).  The 
whole  attitude  of  Germany  towards  Napoleon  is  altering  ;  he  is  “no  longer  a  guardian 
angel,’5  but  a  monster  who  will  “  swallow  up  Germany  if  she  persists  in  a  policy  of 
inaction.” 


480  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1805 


this  Napoleon  answered  that  he  should  consider  Austria’s  action 
as  a  declaration  of  war ;  but  the  protest  was  not  withdrawn. 
Hostilities  did  not  at  once  follow.  Indeed,  it  was  not  till 
August  9th  that  Austria  signed  the  treaty  by  which  she  formally 
adhered  to  the  Russo-British  alliance  of  April  nth.1  In  the 
interval  Napoleon  had  sent  an  envoy  to  warn  Austria  against 
the  insidious  designs  of  Russia  and  Britain,  to  profess  his  own 
pacific  intentions,  and  to  complain  of  Austria’s  unreasonably 
hostile  attitude.  At  the  critical  moment  of  his  great  design 
against  his  arch-enemy  England,  when  he  was  hoping  every 
day  to  hear  that  Villeneuve  had  released  Ganteaume  and  the 
Brest  fleet  from  Cornwallis’  vigilant  blockade,  and  that  the 
combined  squadrons  of  Brest  and  Toulon  were  sweeping  up 
the  Channel  on  their  way  to  Boulogne,  Napoleon  did  not  wish  to 
precipitate  matters  with  Austria.  If  he  could  put  off  the  breach 
long  enough  to  allow  him  to  cross  the  Channel,  he  expected 
to  be  able  to  dictate  terms  to  a  dismayed  Europe  from  the 
conquered  capital  of  George  III. 


1  Owing  to  difficulties  raised  by  Russia  with  regard  to  Malta  and  to  the  English 
Maritime  Code,  it  was  not  till  July  28th  that  this  treaty  was  ratified.  The  delay  thus 
caused  and  that  due  to  the  reluctance  of  Austria  to  commit  herself  to  war  as  long  as 
any  prospect,  however  faint,  of  a  peaceful  settlement  still  remained,  had  no  slight 
share  in  producing  the  disasters  of  the  campaign. 


CHAPTER  XXV 


ULM  AND  AUSTERLITZ 


USTRIA  did  not  embark  on  a  fresh  war  without  serious 


ii  misgivings.  There  were  not  wanting  prophets  who 
declared  that  the  time  was  not  ripe,  and  that  neither  her 
political  nor  her  military  situation  was  favourable.  Indeed 
as  patriotic  a  German  and  as  keen  an  enemy  of  Napoleon 
as  Gentz  despaired  of  success  as  long  as  the  administration 
was  in  the  hands  of  Cobenzl,  Colloredo  and  their  school.1  The 
military  preparations  were  in  a  backward  state.  In  March 
a  complete  change  had  been  made  in  the  administration. 
Archduke  Charles,  who  for  some  time  had  been  losing  his  hold 
on  his  brother’s  confidence,  had  resigned  the  Presidency  of 
the  War  Council  to  Latour,  Schwarzenberg  becoming  Vice- 
President,  and  Mack  replacing  von  Duca  as  Quartermaster- 
General.  This  was  more  than  a  change  of  persons,  it  implied 
the  overthrow  of  the  incompetent  gang  who  had  been  misusing 
the  Archduke’s  ill-bestowed  favour  to  let  the  efficiency  of  the 
army  decline.  Mack,  a  soldier  who  had  risen  from  the  ranks, 
was  well  fitted  for  his  new  post.  Energetic,  painstaking,  not 
without  administrative  capacity,  he  was  “  a  good  peace  general  ” 
even  if  his  performances  in  the  field  were  destined  to  prove 
disastrous,  and  in  a  short  time  he  did  succeed  in  effecting 
great  reforms.  He  managed  to  collect  a  really  considerable 
force  ;  but  the  troops  were  for  the  most  part  raw,  their  equipment 
was  far  from  complete,  and  the  men  were  unknown  to  their 
officers.  Moreover,  the  flagrant  strategical  errors  of  his  plan 
of  campaign  more  than  neutralised  his  good  services  as  an 
organiser,  and  the  disturbance  caused  by  his  reforms  had  not 
had  time  to  settle  down.  The  machinery  was  put  to  the 
severest  of  tests  before  it  could  be  properly  adjusted  to  its  work. 

If  there  was  any  step  which  the  Austrians,  seeing  how 
unprepared  they  were,  ought  to  have  avoided,  it  was  risking 

1  Cf.,  tfaiisser,  ii.  556.. 


31 


482  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1805 


a  pitched  battle  with  Napoleon  before  their  Russian  allies 
could  join  them.  Yet  this  was  precisely  what  Mack  did. 
Though  the  first  Russian  troops  did  not  cross  the  border  of 
Galicia  till  the  middle  of  August,  and  could  not  possibly  reach 
the  Inn  until  nearly  the  end  of  October,  the  Austrians  actually 
took  the  offensive,  and  advanced  into  Bavaria  before  the  middle 
of  September.  Not  only  this,  but  the  army  which  made  this 
rash  move  was  not  the  principal  Austrian  force.  Only  90,000 
men  were  allotted  to  the  Danube,  while  140,000  were  to  be 
gathered  on  the  Mincio  and  Adige  for  a  campaign  in  Italy, 
another  30,000  in  Tyrol  forming  a  connecting  link.  More¬ 
over,  Austria’s  foremost  soldier,  Archduke  Charles,  who  with 
all  his  defects  was  a  man  of  tried  capacity,  received  the  com¬ 
mand  in  Italy,  that  on  the  Danube  being  nominally  entrusted 
to  Archduke  Ferdinand,  the  son  of  the  Grand  Duke  of 
Salzburg,  though  his  appointment  left  the  real  direction  of 
the  army  completely  to  Mack.  Those  who  bethought  them 
of  Mack’s  performances  in  the  field  in  1798  can  hardly  have 
been  filled  with  confidence. 

It  was  not  merely  because  the  Russians  could  take  no 
part  in  it  that  the  advance  into  Bavaria  was  so  unwise.  The 
fate  of  Mack’s  army  shows  clearly  how  completely  the  framers 
of  the  plan  failed  to  appreciate  either  the  strategical  or  the 
political  situation.  By  advancing  to  the  Black  Forest  they 
hoped  to  forestall  Napoleon  in  gaining  military  possession 
of  South-Western  Germany.  But  in  thinking  to  surprise 
Napoleon  they  lent  themselves  to  being  completely  surprised. 
They  had  quite  overlooked  the  strategic  possibilities  of  the 
position  of  the  Grand  Army  along  the  Channel  and 
in  Hanover.  They  had  not  realised  that  the  Grand 
Army  need  not  pass  through  Alsace  on  its  way  from 
Boulogne  to  the  Danube,  that  it  might  just  as  well  direct 
its  march  towards  Frankfort  and  the  Main  as  towards 
the  Upper  Rhine  and  Strassburg,  and  that  an  army  which 
advanced  to  meet  an  anticipated  French  attack  on  the  line 
of  the  Black  Forest  would  expose  its  Northern  flank  to 
Bernadotte  from  Hanover  and  to  Marmont  from  Holland. 
Politically,  their  calculations  were  almost  as  much  at  fault. 
They  hoped  that  their  forward  movement  would  cause  the 
States  of  South-Western  Germany  to  declare  in  their  favour; 
but  Napoleon,  foreseeing  the  certainty  of  war,  had  been  before- 


ULM  AND  AUSTERLITZ 


483 


1803] 

hand  in  securing  the  alliance  of  Bavaria,  Wtirtemberg  and 
Baden.  Maximilian  Joseph  of  Bavaria  hesitated  a  little  before 
accepting  the  proposals  laid  before  him  (March  1805),  which 
took  the  shape  of  an  offensive  and  defensive  alliance  between 
France  and  Bavaria  to  be  cemented  by  the  marriage  of  his 
eldest  daughter  to  Napoleon’s  stepson  Eugene.  But  jealousy 
and  dread  of  Austria,  and  the  knowledge  that  he  must  choose 
one  side  or  the  other,  outweighed  his  wife’s  arguments  in  favour 
of  the  Austrian  alliance,  and  caused  him  to  come  down  on  the 
same  side  of  the  fence  as  the  stronger  battalions.  On  August 
24th  he  signed  a  provisional  treaty  with  France.  A  fortnight 
later  (Sept.  6th)  he  received  an  ultimatum  from  Austria 
requiring  him  to  join  his  forces  to  hers  or  be  treated  as  an 
enemy.  Not  without  hesitation  the  Elector  fled  to  Wurzburg 
to  seek  the  protection  of  the  advancing  French  for  himself 
and  his  army.  On  October  12th  he  confirmed  the  provisional 
treaty,  though  the  French  envoy  Otto,  in  order  to  give  colour 
to  Napoleon’s  assertion  that  the  Elector  had  been  driven  from 
his  territories  by  a  wanton  act  of  aggression,  and  that  the 
Emperor  was  merely  coming  to  the  assistance  of  an  injured 
ally,  deliberately  altered  the  date  of  the  draft  from  August  24th 
to  September  23rd.  Baden  had  shown  much  less  hesitation. 
The  Treaty  of  Ettlingen  (Sept.  2nd)  bound  the  Elector  to 
supply  a  contingent  of  3000  men  to  the  French  army. 
Frederick  II  of  Wtirtemberg  made  rather  more  parade  of 
needing  compulsion.  His  connection  with  Russia  and  England 
on  the  whole  inclined  him  to  the  Coalition,  and  the  project 
he  laid  before  Bavaria,  Baden,  Hesse-Darmstadt  and  Prussia 
for  an  armed  neutrality  which  should  exclude  both  belligerents 
from  the  territories  of  the  contracting  parties,  probably  does 
represent  the  policy  he  would  have  preferred.  The  failure 
of  this  project  and  the  appearance  of  French  troops  at  the 
gates  of  his  capital  removed^  his  scruples ;  on  October  8th 
he  signed  a  treaty  committing  himself  to  the  French  alliance 
and  promising  the  help  of  10,000  troops.  Of  the  four  Powers 
whom  Napoleon  intended  to  unite  in  his  projected  Germanic 
Confederation,  Hesse-Darmstadt  alone  stood  neutral,  looking 
to  Berlin  for  a  lead  which  that  hesitating  Court  failed  to 
give  until  Austerlitz  had  left  her  hardly  any  choice.  The 
attitude  of  the  Diet  was  even  more  pitiable.  Occupied  with 
appeals  and  verdicts  arising  out  of  the  Recess  of  February  25th, 


484  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1805 


1803,  with  the  case  of  the  Knights  whom  Austria  was  prepared 
to  abandon  if  her  demand  for  the  admission  of  enough  new 
Catholic  votes  into  the  College  of  Princes  to  secure  equality 
between  the  religions  were  admitted,  the  Diet  was  quite  unpre¬ 
pared  to  cope  with  such  an  emergency  as  this,  and  when 
Napoleon  claimed  that  he  was  acting  as  its  champion  and 
defending  the  right  of  the  Princes,  the  Diet’s  silence  could  be 
represented  as  a  tacit  admission  of  his  contention. 

Thus  the  Austrian  advance  into  Swabia  not  merely  thrust 
the  head  of  their  army  into  the  lion’s  jaws,  not  merely  exposed 
Mack  and  his  men  to  destruction  long  before  their  Russian 
allies  could  reach  the  Inn,  also  it  drove  Bavaria  over  to 
Napoleon’s  side.  Moreover,  Mack  capped  the  original  blunder 
of  an  advance  with  the  additional  error  of  choosing  the  line 
of  the  I  Her  rather  than  that  of  the  Black  Forest,  the  true  position 
for  an  army  seeking  to  carry  out  the  task  on  which  he  believed 
his  to  be  engaged  of  repelling  an  invasion  coming  from 
Alsace.  So,  too,  he  failed  to  use  his  numerous  cavalry  to  gain 
and  keep  touch  with  the  enemy.  That  his  forces  were  unduly 
dispersed  was  only  in  keeping  with  his  other  errors.  When 
the  storm  broke  upon  him  on  October  8th,  he  had  men  all 
along  the  Danube  from  Neuburg  and  Ingolstadt  to  the  Iller 
and  even  farther  Westward. 

Meanwhile  Napoleon  was  taking  full  advantage  of  the  chance 
Mack’s  rashness  had  placed  in  his  hands.  Not  till  August  22nd, 
when  the  news  reached  him  that  Villeneuve,  despairing  of  his 
task  of  raising  the  blockade  of  Brest,  had  turned  Southward 
for  Cadiz  on  August  15th,  had  the  Emperor  finally  abandoned 
the  idea  of  invading  England  and  adopted  the  alternative  of 
a  blow  at  England’s  continental  allies.  That  for  some  time 
past  he  had  been  contemplating  such  a  change  of  plan  is 
practically  certain.  He  saw,  none  clearer,  that  the  army  at 
Boulogne  might  easily  be  diverted  to  the  Danube,  and  he 
was  ready  for  either  effort.  Had  the  longed-for  opportunity 
of  crippling  the  Coalition  by  a  blow  at  its  heart  come  to  him, 
he  would  hardly  have  been  deterred  from  taking  it  by  the 
knowledge  that  60,000  Austrians  were  moving  slowly  up  the 
Danube  and  that  by  the  end  of  October  40,000  Russians  might 
be  expected  on  the  Inn  ;  but  the  chance  never  came,  and  he 
turned  to  a  hardly  less  dramatic  if  less  decisive  success.  With 
the  beginning  of  September  the  Grand  Army  started  on  its 


1805] 


ULM  AND  AUSTERLITZ 


485 


famous  march  to  the  Danube.  Its  left,  Bernadotte  from 
Hanover  and  Marmont  from  Holland,  moved  towards  the 
Main,  Davout’s  corps  was  directed  on  Spires,  Soult’s  on 
Mannheim,  the  Guards,  Murat’s  cavalry,  Lannes  and  Ney 
made  for  Strassburg.  Before  the  end  of  the  month  they  were 
crossing  the  river,  after  marches  performed  with  wonderful 
celerity  and  precision.  Pushing  on  through  Swabia,  their 
movements  covered  from  the  Austrians  by  their  cavalry,  the 
French  were  on  the  Danube  from  Donauworth  to  Ingolstadt 
before  Mack  had  discovered  their  object.  Convinced  that 
their  main  attack  would  be  delivered  against  the  line  of 
the  Iller,  he  had  been  completely  taken  in  by  such  feints 
as  had  been  made  in  that  direction.  Bernadotte’s  presence 
at  Wurzburg,  where  he  joined  the  Elector  of  Bavaria  on 
September  27th,  Mack  dismissed  as  a  mere  feint  to  divert 
his  attention  from  the  true  attack ;  and  not  even  when,  on 
October  8th,  he  heard  that  Murat  had  seized  Donauworth 
and  driven  Kienmayers  division  back  upon  Munich  did  he 
realise  his  danger  or  take  the  prompt  and  decisive  steps 
which  alone  might  have  extricated  his  army  from  its  imminent 
peril. 

At  the  moment  when  Murat  and  Soult  secured  the  passage 
at  Donauworth  (a.m.,  Oct.  7th),  the  bulk  of  the  Austrian  forces 
were  on  the  Iller  and  at  Ulm,  only  some  20,000  men  lining 
the  Danube  from  Gunzburg  to  Ingolstadt.  Thus  the  French 
were  able  to  sever  Mack  from  his  base  with  but  little  trouble. 
Pushing  out  two  corps  only  towards  the  Isar  to  thrust 
Kienmayer  Eastward  and  to  keep  the  Russians  in  check  should 
they  arrive  in  time  to  attempt  a  diversion,  Napoleon  directed 
the  rest  of  the  Grand  Army  on  Ulm,  seeking  to  close  every 
possible  avenue  of  escape.  Soult  after  seizing  Augsburg 
(Oct.  9th)  was  pushed  out  to  the  Southward  to  secure  the 
road  to  Tyrol  through  Memmingen.  Murat  and  Lannes, 
supported  by  Marmont,  took  the  direct  road  to  Ulm  up  the 
right  bank  of  the  Danube,  meeting  and  defeating  at  Wertingen 
an  Austrian  division  which  was  making  Eastward  to  recover 
Donauworth  (Oct.  8th).  Ney  moved  parallel  along  the  left 
bank  to  close  the  line  of  retreat  which  Kray  had  taken  in 
June  1800.1 

Mack  was  thus  in  the  toils ;  but  had  he  adopted  the 

1  Cf.  p.  447. 


486  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1805 


Archduke  Ferdinand’s  proposal,  and  at  once  endeavoured  to 
cut  his  way  out  through  Nordlingen  across  the  communications 
of  the  Grand  Army,  he  might  have  got  away,  more  especially 
as,  through  some  misunderstanding,  Murat  had  brought  two 
of  Ney’s  three  divisions  over  to  the  right  bank  (Oct.  10th). 
The  third  division,  that  of  Dupont,  was  thus  left  isolated, 
and  advancing  alone  on  Ulm,  was  defeated  and  cut  to  pieces 
at  Albeck  (Oct.  nth).  But  Mack  failed  to  avail  himself  of 
this  chance  of  escape.  Beguiled  by  a  false  rumour  that 
Napoleon  had  been  recalled  to  the  Rhine  by  a  rising  at 
Paris,  he  stuck  fast  to  Ulm,  and  only  Werneck’s  division  moved 
out  on  the  13th  to  the  comparative  safety  of  Heidenheim. 
Thus  when,  on  the  14th,  Riesch  followed,  it  was  too  late. 
Ney  by  a  brilliant  stroke  secured  the  bridge  of  Elchingen, 
planted  his  corps  in  the  path  of  the  Austrians,  and  thrust  them 
back  on  Ulm.  This  success  allowed  the  French  to  close  the 
Northern  road  again;  and  with  Soult  at  Memmingen,  from 
which  place  he  had  driven  Jellachich  back  into  Tyrol 
(Oct.  13th),  the  Southern  line  also  was  blocked.  Archduke 
Ferdinand  with  1500  mounted  men  did  manage  to  push  through 
by  Aalen  and  Ottingen  to  Nuremberg  and  so  to  Eger,  but 
the  rest  of  Mack’s  army  were  less  fortunate.  Ney’s  capture 
of  the  Michaelsberg,  a  strong  position  north  of  the  town, 
made  Ulm  almost  untenable,  and  Mack’s  brave  words  about 
dying  in  the  last  ditch  came  down  on  the  17th  to  a  promise 
to  capitulate  if  not  relieved  within  a  week,  and  on  the  20th 
to  an  immediate  surrender,  which  set  the  whole  of  the  French 
army  except  Ney’s  corps  free  for  further  operations.  Had 
he  managed  to  delay  Napoleon  a  week  so  as  to  give  the 
Russians  time  to  fall  on  the  screen  containing  them,  he  would 
have  done  something  to  mitigate  the  disaster  his  rashness, 
his  short-sightedness  and  his  obstinacy  had  produced.  Almost 
the  only  Austrian  who  comes  creditably  out  of  the  affair  is 
Werneck,  who  made  a  gallant  but  unsuccessful  attempt  at  a 
diversion  by  falling  on  Ney’s  rear  on  the  14th,  instead  of 
getting  away  Northward.  His  mistimed  loyalty  involved  him 
in  the  disaster,  for  Murat  overtook  him  and  forced  him  to 
surrender  at  Trochtelfingen  (Oct.  16th),  so  that  nothing  was 
left  of  Mack’s  whole  army  but  Kienmayer’s  division  and  the 
fugitives  who  had  gained  Bohemia  with  Archduke  Ferdinand 
or  Tyrol  with  Jellachich. 


1805] 


ULM  AND  AUSTERLITZ 


487 


Napoleon  was  not  the  man  to  leave  unimproved  such  a 
success  as  Ulm.  The  line  of  the  Lech  was  made  the  French 
base  for  the  next  phase  of  the  campaign,  and  within  four  days 
of  the  fall  of  Ulm  the  French  columns  were  again  on  the  move. 
Between  Napoleon’s  victorious  host  and  Vienna  there  were  only 
some  35,000  Russians  who  had  just  reached  the  Inn,  and  about 
20,000  Austrians,  Kienmayer’s  division  with  various  details. 
Such  a  force  could  not  hope  to  stop  Napoleon,  and  orders 
had  to  be  sent  to  Archduke  Charles  to  abandon  the  Italian 
campaign  and  return  with  all  speed  to  save  Vienna.  Thus 
Napoleon  was  able  to  cross  in  succession  the  Southern  tributaries 
of  the  Danube,  beginning  with  the  Inn  (Oct.  28th).  While 
his  main  body  moved  down  the  river,  Ney’s  corps  and  the 
Bavarians  were  detached  into  Tyrol  to  obtain  touch  with 
Massena’s  Army  of  Italy,  which,  despite  a  sharp  check  at 
Caldiero  (Oct.  31st),  was  following  the  Austrians  as  they 
retreated.  Had  the  Austrians  known  how  to  use  them,  there 
were  in  Tyrol  the  elements  for  an  effective  diversion.  If  the 
various  corps,  Hiller  in  South  Tyrol,  Jellachich  in  Vorarlberg, 
Archduke  John  in  the  valley  of  the  Inn,  had  been  properly  com¬ 
bined  and  supported  by  the  Tyrolese  “  insurrection,”  which 
would  have  given  the  Austrians  20,000  good  shots  and  hardy 
mountaineers,  an  effective  blow  might  have  been  struck  at  the 
French  communications.  But  the  opposite  was  done.  There 
was  no  cohesion  :  Jellachich  was  cut  off  and  taken  (Nov.  13th), 
Archduke  John  evacuated  Tyrol  and,  moving  over  the  Brenner 
and  down  the  Pusterthal,  joined  the  Army  of  Italy  in  Carinthia, 
and  the  French  were  able  to  seize  the  Brenner  and  to  get  into 
touch  with  Massena. 

Meanwhile  Kutusov  had  retired  from  one  river  to  another, 
steadily  refusing  to  fight,  a  policy  much  resented  by  his  Austrian 
colleague  Merveldt.  The  disagreement  led  to  the  Austrians 
taking  a  Southerly  direction  after  leaving  the  Inn,  with  the 
idea  of  gaining  touch  with  Archduke  Charles.  Altering  his 
plan,  however,  Merveldt  moved  down  the  Enns  to  rejoin 
Kutusov  at  St.  Polten,  only  to  encounter,  at  Steyer,  Marmont 
on  his  way  to  Leoben  (Nov.  8th),  and  a  sharp  fight  resulted  in 
the  annihilation  of  the  Austrians.  This  put  out  of  Kutusov’s 
head  any  idea  he  may  have  had  of  fighting  a  battle  for  Vienna. 
He  was  already  feeling  nervous  for  his  communications  with 
the  second  Russian  army  now  on  the  frontier  of  Moravia,  for 


488  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1805 


Napoleon  had  detached  three  divisions  under  Mortier  to  the 
left  bank,  and  they  were  moving  down  the  river.  Kutusov 
therefore  evacuated  the  strong  St.  Polten  position  and  fell 
back  across  the  Danube  at  Mautern  (p.m.,  Nov.  8th).  This 
allowed  Napoleon  to  push  on  past  St.  Polten  to  Vienna,  where 
there  was  only  a  weak  garrison  some  13,000  strong  ;  but  it  gave 
Kutusov  a  chance  of  falling  on  Mortier’s  isolated  force.  As 
Mortier’s  divisions  moved  through  the  difficult  defile  of  Diirren- 
stein  one  Russian  division  barred  their  path  and  another 
intercepted  their  retreat  (Nov.  nth).  Gazan’s  division  was 
annihilated,  and  the  whole  corps  nearly  destroyed.  Still  sharp 
as  was  the  check  which  Kutusov  had  the  satisfaction  of  having 
inflicted  on  the  French,  it  had  little  influence  on  the  fortune  of 
the  campaign :  nothing  was  done  to  follow  it  up,  and  mean¬ 
while  Napoleon  had  seized  Vienna  (Nov.  13th)  and  obtained 
possession  of  the  great  bridge  over  the  Danube. 

Kutusov  and  the  garrison  of  Vienna  now  fell  back  North¬ 
ward,  Napoleon’s  effort  to  intercept  the  retreat  of  the  Rus¬ 
sians  from  Krems  being  foiled  by  Bagration  at  Hollabrtinn 
(Nov.  1 6th),  so  that  they  made  their  way  safely  through 
Znaym  to  Briinn.  The  Russians  were  thus  able  to  unite  with 
their  second  army  near  Olmtitz  (Nov.  20th).  Napoleon  had 
pushed  out  as  far  as  Briinn  in  the  hopes  of  cutting  them  off ; 
but  finding  his  effort  unsuccessful,  he  came  to  a  halt.  The  truth 
of  the  matter  was,  that  despite  his  success  in  seizing  his  enemy’s 
capital  his  position  was  none  too  secure.  The  force  which  he 
had  available — the  Guards,  Murat’s  cavalry,  and  the  corps  of 
Soult  and  Lannes — was  not  much  more  than  60,000  men,  while 
the  joint  armies  of  Kutusov,  Biixhowden  and  the  Austrians  were 
well  over  80,000,  and  a  force  at  least  as  large  was  threatening 
Vienna  from  the  South.  This  was  the  united  corps  of  the  Arch¬ 
dukes  Charles  and  John,  now  at  Marburg  on  the  Drave. 
Between  these  forces  Napoleon  had  indeed  the  interior  position, 
but  his  long  line  of  communications  had  absorbed  the  greater 
portion  of  his  force.  Two  corps  (Ney  and  Augereau)  were  in 
Tyrol,  one  (Marmont)  was  in  Styria,  the  greater  part  oi 
another  (Davout)  in  and  round  Vienna,  Mortier  and  the  con¬ 
tingents  of  Baden  and  Wiirtemberg  higher  up  the  Danube,  and 
the  only  troops  within  reach  were  Bernadotte’s  corps  at  Znaym 
on  his  left  and  one  of  Davout’s  divisions  a  little  way  to  the  right 
rear.  Had  the  Allies  only  refrained  from  risking  all  on  an 


ULM  AND  AUSTERLITZ 


489 


1805] 

immediate  action,  had  they  even  waited  for  the  reinforcements 
Archduke  Ferdinand  was  rallying  in  Bohemia  and  for  those 
which  were  still  on  their  way  from  Russia,  the  delay  would  have 
been  all  in  their  favour. 

Moreover,  there  was  another  and  a  greater  danger  threatening 
Napoleon.  On  his  march  through  Franconia,  Bernadotte’s  corps 
had  violated  the  neutrality  of  the  Prussian  province  of  Anspach. 
The  infringement  appears  to  have  been  deliberate.  Had 
Bernadotte  made  a  detour  to  avoid  Anspach,  his  arrival  on 
the  Danube  would  have  been  delayed  by  at  least  a  day,  and 
Napoleon  seems  never  to  have  imagined  that  Prussia’s  appar¬ 
ently  inexhaustible  capacity  for  submitting  to  insults  would  not 
be  equal  to  this  additional  slight.1  But  it  awoke  in  Frederick 
William  and  in  Prussia  an  explosion  of  furious  wrath,  which  was 
increased  rather  than  assuaged  by  the  off-hand  manner  in  which 
Napoleon  treated  the  matter  as  a  mere  bagatelle.  Prussia 
began  to  arm.  Planover,  evacuated  by  Bernadotte,  was 
occupied  by  Prussian  troops,  and  the  resentment  which  had 
recently  been  excited  by  the  Czar’s  efforts  to  coerce  Prussia 
into  joining  the  Coalition  was  now  diverted  against  Napoleon. 
Alexander  hastened  to  Berlin  to  arrange  in  person  for  the 
adhesion  of  Prussia  to  the  Coalition  ;  and  though  the  first  news 
which  greeted  him  there  was  the  tidings  of  the  disaster  at  Ulm, 
his  influence  proved  sufficient  to  keep  Frederick  William  firm 
in  his  determination  to  join  the  Allies.  The  opposition  of  the 
Francophil  party  had  been  revived  by  the  news  from  the 
Danube,  but  Frederick  William  felt  that  he  had  gone  too  far  to 
recede,  and  on  November  3rd  he  signed  the  Convention  of 
Potsdam.  By  this  Prussia  was  to  offer  Napoleon  certain  terms  ; 
and  if  within  four  weeks  he  had  not  accepted  them  was  to  join 
the  Allies  with  180,000  men.2  These  terms  amounted  to  the 
independence  of  all  Europe  outside  the  “  natural  boundaries  ”  of 
France.  The  King  of  Sardinia  was  to  obtain  Parma,  Piacenza 
and  Genoa  in  lieu  of  Piedmont;  Austria  was  to  have  the  Mincio 
as  her  boundary  in  Italy.  The  question  which  more  than  any 
other  had  contributed  to  keep  Prussia  from  joining  the  Allies, 
that  of  Hanover,  was  relegated  to  a  secret  article.  Alexander 
promised  to  use  his  good  offices  with  England  to  obtain  not  only 
subsidies  on  the  usual  scale,  but  the  cession  of  Hanover  to 
Prussia.  That  Pitt  should  have  absolutely  refused  to  con- 
1  Cf.  Haiisser,  ii.  611.  2  Cf.  The  Third  Coalition ,  pp.  221  ff. 


490  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1805 

template  the  proposal  was  only  natural ;  it  was  also  one  of  the 
causes  which  made  Frederick  William  finally  draw  back  at  the 
eleventh  hour. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  suppose  that  Frederick  William 
was  guilty  of  bad  faith  in  the  extraordinary  way  in  which  he 
followed  up  this  treaty.  Though  there  was  probably  much 
truth  in  the  Duke  of  Wellington’s  opinion,  that  “the  Prussians 
fancied  .  .  .  they  could  fall  upon  the  rear  of  Bonaparte  in  a 
moment,  but  I  knew  that  the  King  of  Prussia  could  not  have 
his  troops  on  the  Danube  under  three  months,” 1  this  was 
hardly  the  King’s  opinion.  Yet  he  selected  Haugwitz  as  the 
bearer  of  this  all-important  ultimatum  to  Napoleon,  though 
Haugwitz  was  the  typical  representative  of  the  policy  whose 
unwisdom  Prussia  was  now  learning.  Moreover,  Haugwitz 
delayed  his  departure  till  November  14th,  and  did  not  arrive  at 
Briinn  till  November  28th,  so  that  as  Napoleon  was  to  be  given 
a  month  in  which  to  give  his  answer,  Prussia’s  intervention  could 
not  have  taken  place  till  practically  two  months  after  the  Treaty 
of  Potsdam.  This  need  not  be  ascribed  to  treachery  on 
Frederick  William’s  part.  He  could  hardly  be  expected  to  act 
with  promptitude  and  decision  even  when  the  fate  of  Europe 
depended  on  his  action. 

Meanwhile  the  decisive  battle  had  been  fought.  The  heavy 
responsibility  for  fighting  at  Austerlitz  must  be  laid  at  Alex¬ 
ander’s  door.  The  strategic  situation  made  a  premature  decision 
the  height  of  folly,  for  an  English  force  under  Lord  Cathcart 
was  landing  in  Hanover  and  was  about  to  join  hands  with  the 
Swedes  from  Pomerania  and  a  Russian  corps,  another  Anglo- 
Russian  expedition  was  preparing  a  great  diversion  in  Italy, 
Bennigsen’s  Russians  were  only  a  few  marches  away,  and 
Napoleon  could  hardly  have  forced  on  the  battle  he  so  sorely 
needed  if  the  Allies  had  adopted  PAbian  tactics.  But  the  Czar 
was  blind  to  all  this.  Supremely  confident  in  Russian  invinci¬ 
bility,  anxious  to  prove  that  Napoleon’s  successes  were  due  to 
his  never  having  encountered  Russia’s  bayonets,  Alexander 
listened  to  the  advice  of  his  aide-de-camp,  Peter  Dolgorucki  and 
of  a  few  other  hot-headed  young  men,  and  rejecting  the  sounder 
but  less  attractive  proposals  of  the  cautious  Kutusov,  determined 
to  fight.  He  failed  to  see  that  any  mishap  to  the  Coalition 
would  be  sure  to  exercise  an  enormous  influence  over  the 

1  Cf.  Maxwell’s  Wellington ,  i.  75. 


ULM  AND  AUSTERLITZ 


491 


i8°5] 

vacillating  hesitation  and  cautious  self-seeking  of  Prussia. 
Moreover,  Francis  II  was  almost  as  anxious  for  battle  as  Alex¬ 
ander,  though  Schwarzenberg  was  against  fighting.  An  effort 
was  made  to  induce  Napoleon  to  come  to  terms,  but  he  asked 
too  much,  and  the  only  result  of  the  negotiations  was  to  inflame 
Dolgorucki’s  zeal  for  battle  by  convincing  him  that  Napoleon 
desired  to  avoid  it. 

On  November  27th  the  Allies  began  their  move  on  Briinn, 
driving  in  the  French  outposts  from  Wischau  (28th),  and  coming 
up  to  Austerlitz  by  the  evening  of  December  1st.  Napoleon 
had  made  great  efforts  to  concentrate  all  available  troops,  and 
was  able  to  put  nearly  70,000  men  into  the  field  against  80,000 
Allies.  His  position  behind  the  little  Goldbach  was  at  right 
angles  to  the  high  road  from  Briinn  to  Austerlitz  on  which  his 
left  rested.  His  right  was  covered  by  the  marshy  lakes  of 
Mennitz  and  Satschan,  and  found  a  source  of  strength  in  the 
villages  of  Sokelnitz  and  Tellnitz.  It  was  against  this  flank  that 
the  Allies  intended  to  direct  their  attack,  hoping  to  drive  in 
Napoleon’s  right,  and  so  sever  his  communications  with  Vienna. 
Kienmayer’s  Austrians  were  to  lead  the  way  with  three  Russian 
corps  in  support,  some  35,000  men  in  all  being  detailed  for  this 
move.  In  the  centre  stood  the  plateau  and  village  of  Pratzen. 
Here  under  Kutusov’s  own  direction  Kollowrat’s  Russians  and 
a  few  Austrians  formed  a  weak  connecting  link  with  Lich¬ 
tenstein’s  cavalry,  18  *  Austrian  and  30  Russian  squadrons, 
Bagration’s  Russian  corps  and  the  Russian  Imperial  Guard,  who 
formed  the  Allied  right.  Napoleon  had  realised  the  Allied 
plan  when  he  saw  their  masses  concentrating  on  their  left. 
Entrusting  to  Davout  the  task  of  holding  the  turning  movement 
in  check,  opposing  Murat  and  Lannes  to  Bagration  and  Lichten¬ 
stein,  he  launched  Soult  with  Oudinot  in  support  against  the 
Southern  part  of  the  heights  of  Pratzen,  Bernadotte  moving 
forward  on  his  left  against  Brasowitz.  Just  as  Kutusov  at  the 
express  orders  of  the  Czar  was  moving  to  the  support  of  the  turn¬ 
ing  movement,  Soult  delivered  his  attack.  Kutusov  promptly 
formed  his  men  to  their  front  to  contest  the  possession  of  the 
Pratzen  plateau,  and  a  division  of  Bernadotte’s  corps  had  to 
come  to  the  help  of  Soult.  There  was  heavy  fighting  for  a 
couple  of  hours,  a  great  cavalry  contest  between  the  cavalry  of 
the  Russian  Guard  and  those  of  Napoleon’s  Guard  under  Rapp 
and  Be  ssiercs,  which  ended  in  the  success  of  the  French,  frequent 


492  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1805 


efforts  on  the  part  of  the  Russians  to  recover  the  plateau,  deter¬ 
mined  opposition  on  the  part  of  Soult  and  Bernadotte.  At  last 
success  turned  definitely  to  the  French,  the  Russian  centre  was 
pierced,  and  the  victorious  French,  turning  to  their  right,  fell  in 
full  force  on  the  flank  of  the  Allied  left  which  had  been  unable 
to  crush  Davout  or  do  more  than  thrust  him  back.  Caught 
between  Davout  in  their  front  and  Soult  on  their  flank,  the 
Russians  were  driven  in  upon  the  Littawa,  a  stream  which  runs 
into  the  Goldbach  below  Tellnitz  at  an  acute  angle.  A  few  got 
away  across  the  bridge  of  Anjesd  before  it  broke,  some  escaped 
by  the  strip  of  land  between  the  two  lakes  of  Mennitz  and 
Satschan,  some  over  the  ice,  but  the  slaughter  was  tremendous. 
The  ice  broke  in  many  places  ;  and  though  a  few  battalions 
sacrificed  themselves  to  save  the  rest,  the  columns  engaged  in 
the  turning  movement  were  practically  annihilated. 

On  the  right  the  fight  had  been  fairly  even,  inclining  in 
favour  of  the  French,  for  Lannes’  infantry  had  beaten  back  the 
repeated  charges  of  the  Russian  and  Austrian  horse ;  but  there 
the  Allies  drew  off  in  good  order.  Their  losses  had  been 
enormous  :  30,000  men  and  nearly  200  guns  is  probably  no 
exaggerated  figure.  Their  army,  completely  disorganised  and 
demoralised  by  so  overwhelming  a  disaster,  withdrew  in  a 
South-Easterly  direction,  as  though  making  for  Hungary;  but 
Austerlitz  had  banished  all  ideas  of  further  resistance  from  the 
mind  of  Francis  II.  His  willingness  to  treat  for  peace  was 
perhaps  a  little  premature.  Had  Prussia  not  entrusted  her 
ultimatum  to  a  man  to  whom  the  news  of  Austerlitz  cannot  have 
been  exactly  distasteful,  had  she  intervened  even  at  the  eleventh 
hour,  when  the  army  of  Archduke  Charles  was  still  intact  and 
there  was  an  excellent  chance  of  raising  North  Germany 
round  the  nucleus  formed  by  Cathcart’s  corps,  even  Austerlitz 
need  not  have  been  decisive.  But  Francis  had  had  enough. 
Resolution  was  not  his  most  salient  characteristic,  nor  was  he 
the  man  to  make  great  sacrifices  for  an  idea.  He  acquiesced  in 
his  defeat,  and  was  ready  to  make  peace  on  bad  terms  lest  a 
prolongation  of  the  struggle  should  bring  even  sterner  conditions. 
On  December  6th  an  armistice  was  signed  between  Napoleon 
and  Francis,  a  contribution  of  100,000,000  francs  being  imposed 
on  the  Hapsburg  dominions,  and  the  Russian  army  promptly 
departing  for  its  own  territories. 

This  meant  the  collapse  of  the  Coalition.  Austria’s  defection 


ULM  AND  AUSTERLITZ 


493 


i8°5] 

absolved  Prussia  from  the  obligations  of  November  3rd,  while 
Haugwitz  hastened  to  explain  away  the  ultimatum,  to  con¬ 
gratulate  Napoleon  on  his  victory,  and  to  sign,  almost  at  a 
moment’s  notice,  the  Treaty  of  Schonbrunn,  which  placed 
Prussia  at  Napoleon’s  disposal  (Dec.  15th).  This  abdication  of 
the  mediatory  position  she  had  assumed  obtained  for  Prussia 
the  coveted  Hanover.  In  return  she  ceded  Anspach  to  Bavaria, 
Neufchatel  and  Wesel  to  France,  and  Cleves  to  an  unnamed 
Prince  of  the  Empire.  If  she  had  made  a  treaty  with  France 
on  these  terms  in  July,  her  policy  might  have  been  open  to 
criticism,  but  there  would  be  less  occasion  to  condemn  her 
conduct.  But  to  receive  as  a  gift  from  the  man  against  whom  she 
had  been  fulminating  a  province  belonging  to  a  friendly  Power 
from  whom  she  was  actually  demanding  subsidies  that  she 
might  avenge — among  other  things — the  wrongs  committed  by 
that  same  man  in  seizing  this  very  province,  such  an  action 
could  not  but  destroy  any  shreds  of  reputation  which  yet 
lingered  round  the  Prussian  name.  The  possession  of  Hanover 
gave  compactness  to  her  territories  in  North  Germany,  it  had 
been  one  of  her  principal  desires  for  many  years,  but  it  was 
destined  to  prove  a  gain  as  temporary  as  it  was  discreditable. 
Haugwitz  has  a  heavy  burden  of  responsibility  to  bear.  His 
slowness  in  travelling  to  the  Danube,  his  utter  incapacity  to  deal 
with  Napoleon,  his  failure  to  even  present  his  ultimatum, 
played  into  Napoleon’s  hands  and  contributed  very  largely  to 
the  humiliating  situation  in  which  Prussia  found  herself. 

Meanwhile  the  Treaty  of  Schonbrunn  had  deprived  the 
Austrian  diplomatists,  who  were  striving  hard  to  obtain  good 
terms  from  the  conqueror,  of  their  last  ray  of  hope.  On 
December  26th,  Austria  signed  the  Peace  of  Pressburg,  by  which 
she  had  to  accept  and  acknowledge  the  constitutional  and 
territorial  changes  made  by  Napoleon  since  the  Peace  of 
Luneville,  and  to  purchase  peace  by  great  cessions  of  territory. 
To  the  Kingdom  of  Italy  she  had  to  cede  Venetia,  Istria  and 
Dalmatia.  Baden  and  Wiirtemberg  divided  between  them  the 
Breisgau  and  the  other  Austrian  possessions  in  Swabia.  Brixen, 
Trent  and  the  other  gains  of  1803  went  now  to  Bavaria,  and 
the  bitterest  blow  of  all  was  to  be  compelled  to  abandon 
Tyrol  and  its  gallant  mountaineers  to  the  tender  mercies  of 
Maximilian  Joseph.  After  this  an  indemnity  of  40  million 
gulden  was  a  minor  aggravation. 


494  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1805 


Austria  did  obtain  a  little  territory  in  return,  Berchtesgaden 
and  the  Archbishopric  of  Salzburg,  the  Elector  being  com¬ 
pensated  with  Wurzburg,  which  Bavaria  resigned.  However, 
her  Imperial  position  in  Germany  received  a  coup  dc  grace  in 
the  celebrated  fourteenth  article  of  the  Peace,  which  not  only 
mediatised  these  Imperial  Knights  whose  dominions  were 
situated  in  the  territories  of  Baden,  Bavaria  and  Wiirtemberg, 
but  declared  that  these  three  Powers  should  enjoy  complete  and 
undivided  sovereignty  over  their  states.  This  formal  recogni¬ 
tion  of  their  practical  independence  was  completed  by  the  eleva¬ 
tion  of  the  Electors  of  Bavaria  and  Wiirtemberg  to  the  rank 
of  Kings,  of  the  Elector  of  Baden  and  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse- 
Darmstadt  to  that  of  Grand  Dukes.  The  policy  Rewbell  had 
enunciated  in  1797,  when  he  declared  “  il  faut  reHguer 
l’Empereur  dans  ses  etats  hereditaires  et  la  depouiller  de  tout  la 
reste,” 1  seemed  to  have  been  carried  to  a  successful  conclusion. 
Indeed,  Napoleon  might  justly  claim  to  have  realised  the  object 
of  Richelieu  and  of  Mazarin,  to  have  effected  what  neither 
Francis  I  nor  Louis  xiv  had  been  able  to  accomplish,  the 
humiliation  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg.  Whether  in  imposing 
such  harsh  terms  on  Austria  Napoleon  was  not  a  little  short¬ 
sighted  may  well  be  doubted.  Austria,  annoyed  with  Russian 
dilatoriness,  angry  with  England’s  failure  to  lend  more  effective 
help,  furious  above  all  with  Prussia’s  vacillation,  might  have  been 
won  over  to  Napoleon  in  1805,  and  bound  to  him  by  a  less 
galling  chain  than  the  alliance  of  1811.  Talleyrand,  indeed, 
urged  upon  Napoleon  the  wisdom  of  a  return  to  Choiseul’s 
Franco-Austrian  alliance,  suggesting  that  by  compensating 
Austria  with  the  Danubian  principalities,  France  might  alienate 
her  so  completely  from  Russia  that  she  would  be  bound  to  the 
French  alliance.2  Napoleon’s  rejection  of  this  suggestion  was 
probably  due  to  his  wish  to  induce  Russia  and  Prussia  to  accede 
to  the  “  Continental  System,”  by  which  he  hoped  to  cripple 
England  completely  by  excluding  her  commerce  from  Europe. 
If  he  gave  the  Danubian  principalities  to  Austria,  he  would 
create  an  insuperable  breach  between  France  and  Russia. 
Hence  he  adopted  a  policy  towards  Austria  which  allowed  her 
in  1809  to  identify  herself  with  the  cause  of  German  national 
resistance  to  his  tyranny,  which  did  much  to  unite  the  different 


1  Cf.  Bailleu,  Preussen  und  Frankreich. 

2  Cf.  Haiisser,  ii.  653,  and  Rose,  ii.  47-48, 


1805] 


ULM  AND  AUSTERLITZ 


495 


races  which  owned  the  Hapsburg  rule  by  the  bond  of  common 
sufferings,  which  probably  went  far  to  decide  Austria’s  course  at 
the  crisis  of  the  great  struggle  in  1813.  Had  Napoleon  wanted  to 
base  his  power  over  Europe  on  a  sure  foundation,  he  might  have 
compensated  Austria  for  her  loss  of  influence  in  South-West 
Germany  by  undoing  the  work  of  1741.  A  Franco-Austrian 
alliance  founded  on  the  restoration  of  Silesia  to  Austria  need 
not  have  alienated  Russia,  and  one  may  judge  by  1806  of 
the  scanty  chance  of  success  with  which  the  successors  of 
Frederick  II  would  have  resisted  a  revival  of  the  alliance 
of  fifty  years  earlier. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 


THE  CONFEDERATION  OF  THE  RHINE  AND  THE 

OVERTHROW  OF  PRUSSIA 

AUSTERLITZ  had  in  all  but  in  name  destroyed  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire;  but  as  Napoleon  had  once  said,  “it  was 
necessary  to  create  something  in  its  place,”  and  it  was  on  this 
task  that  he  was  occupied  during  the  earlier  part  of  the  year 
1806.  That  some  reconstruction  was  impending  was  notorious. 
It  was  impossible  for  a  constitution  to  continue  in  which  the 
Diet  stood  mute  while  some  of  the  Electors  made  war  upon  the 
Emperor.  Projects  for  reform  were  put  forward  on  all  sides,  and 
the  wildest  rumours  were  current  throughout  Germany.  That 
that  reconstruction  would  come  from  Paris  was  certain,  and 
all  eyes  were  directed  thither.  The  French  troops  were  still 
in  occupation  of  Southern  Germany ;  and  even  if  the  prin¬ 
cipal  states  had  not  already  pledged  themselves  to  Napoleon, 
his  fiat  could  not  have  been  resisted.  Moreover,  he  was 
beginning  that  dynastic  policy  which,  on  the  one  hand,  erected 
new  principalities  for  his  relations  or  imposed  them  on  the 
thrones  of  older  houses,  and,  on  the  other,  bound  the  old 
dynasties  to  his  by  marriages.  Thus,  while  a  new  Duchy  was 
erected  on  the  Rhine  for  Murat  out  of  Berg  (March),  which 
Bavaria  gave  up,  Eugene  Beauharnais  was  married  to  the 
daughter  of  the  King  of  Bavaria,  and  the  Electoral  Prince  of 
Baden,  to  whom  she  had  been  betrothed,  had  to  accept  in  her 
stead  Eugene’s  cousin  Stephanie. 

Meanwhile  the  old  game  was  being  played  at  Paris.  Intrigue 
and  bribery  were  rife  once  more,  only  that  “  mediatisation  ”  had 
replaced  “  compensation  ”  as  the  convenient  formula  under  which 
the  plunder  of  the  weaker  by  the  stronger  was  being  disguised. 
Scheme  after  scheme  was  drafted  and  placed  before  Napoleon 
before  he  could  be  satisfied.  At  last,  early  in  July  a  plan  was 
adopted,  though  its  publication  had  to  be  deferred  until  the 
steps  necessary  to  secure  the  military  hold  of  France  on  Southern 

496 


i8o6]  THE  CONFEDERATION  OF  THE  RHINE  497 


Germany  had  been  taken.  On  July  17th  the  treaty  establishing 
a  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  was  laid  before  the  envoys  of  the 
various  German  states  then  at  Paris.  It  provided  for  the  union 
of  some  sixteen  states  in  a  Confederation,  under  the  protection 
of  the  Emperor  of  the  French  and  quite  independent  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  The  various  members  were  to  retain 
full  sovereignty  and  independence  in  domestic  affairs,  while  a 
Diet  sitting  at  Frankfurt  was  to  regulate  their  foreign  affairs,  to 
settle  quarrels  between  members,  and  discuss  matters  of  common 
interest.  This  Diet  was  to  consist  of  two  Colleges,  that  of  Kings, 
which  was  to  include  the  Arch  Chancellor,  the  Kings  of 
Bavaria  and  Wiirtemberg,  and  the  Grand  Dukes  of  Baden, 
Berg  and  Hesse-Darmstadt ;  and  that  of  Princes,  composed  of 
the  ten  other  members  of  the  Confederation,  the  Princes  of 
Nassau-Usingen,  Nassau-Weilburg,  Hohenzollern-Hechingen, 
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen,  Lichtenstein,  Salm-Salm,  Salm- 
Kyrburg,  Isenburg,  the  Duke  of  Aremberg,  and  the  Count  de  la 
Leyen.  When  the  two  Colleges  sat  together,  the  Arch  Chancellor, 
henceforward  to  be  called  Prince  Primate,  was  to  preside.  The 
dependence  of  the  Confederation  on  Napoleon  was  secured  by  a 
proviso  that  the  nomination  of  a  successor  to  the  Prince  Primate 
should  be  entrusted  to  the  Emperor.  One  article  bound  the 
members  not  to  take  service  except  in  the  Confederation  or 
with  its  allies,  another  established  a  close  alliance  between  the 
French  Empire  and  the  Confederation,  which  was  pledged  to 
take  part  in  every  war  in  which  France  chose  to  engage ;  while 
yet  another  fixed  the  contingents  to  be  supplied  by  the  members.1 
The  Confederation  was  not  much  more  than  a  military  and 
political  union,  since  the  Diet  was  not  empowered  to  interfere 
with  the  domestic  affairs  of  the  members,  could  not  legislate,  and 
was  not  really  more  than  “  a  political  congress  in  which  equals 
with  common  interests  discuss  those  interests  amicably  and 
agree  upon  measures  for  the  common  utility/’ 2 3 

The  majority  of  the  articles  of  the  constituting  document 
dealt  with  a  matter  of  the  very  greatest  interest  to  the  German 
Princes,  the  territorial  question.  Briefly,  an  enormous  simplifica¬ 
tion  was  to  be  effected  in  the  map  of  Germany  by  the  mediatisa- 
tion  of  all  the  petty  states  which  had  the  misfortune  to  find  their 

1  France  was  to  provide  200,000,  Bavaria  30,000,  Wurtemberg  12,000,  Baden 
8000,  Berg  5000,  Darmstadt  4000.  the  College  of  Princes  4000. 

*  Cf.  Fisher,  p.  165. 

32 


493  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1806 


territories  enclosed  in  the  dominions  of  their  larger  neighbours. 
At  one  stroke  the  four  benches  of  Counts,  the  Grand  Masters  of 
the  Maltese  and  Teutonic  Orders,  many  princely  families  which 
had  collective  votes,  and  at  least  eight  which  held  individual 
votes,  among  them  Lobkowitz,  Thurn  und  Taxis,  Orange-Fulda 
and  Dietrichstein,  in  all  some  sixty-seven  immediate  Iierr- 
schaften ,  were  reduced  to  the  rank  of  subjects.  With  them  the 
Imperial  Knights  lost  their  independent  sovereignty,  though  all 
the  Princes  thus  mediatised  retained  their  patrimonial  property 
and  all  non-sovereign  rights,  while  in  the  matter  of  taxation 
they  were  to  be  placed  on  the  same  footing  as  members  of 
reigning  houses.  The  magnitude  of  the  change  can  be  best 
appreciated  from  the  fact  that  the  suppressed  states  amounted 
to  over  12,000  square  miles,  and  contained  1,200,000  inhabitants. 
It  was  a  highly  necessary  change  had  it  only  been  brought  about 
in  a  different  way.  The  statelets  which  thus  disappeared  were 
obstacles  to  good  government  and  to  material  prosperity.  They 
were  the  scenes  of  extravagant  efforts  to  vie  with  larger  Courts ; 
their  independent  existence  had  made  Germany  a  complex, 
involved  tangle,  in  which  national  life  was  impossible ;  and  if 
Napoleon  was  aiming  at  his  own  advantage  in  thus  destroying 
the  forms  of  a  constitution  which  had  kept  Germany  weak  and 
disunited,  if  his  work  of  destruction  was  only  unintentionally  the 
necessary  preliminary  to  Bismarck’s  work  of  construction,  and 
was  only  accidentally  the  means  of  his  own  undoing,  he  had  at 
least  cleared  away  the  obsolete  debris  of  the  old  organisation 
which  had  hitherto  prevented  the  growth  of  a  new  and  vigorous 
institution. 

The  members  of  the  new  Confederation  did  not  all  receive 
it  with  enthusiasm ;  even  Dalberg,  who  had  gone  further  than 
any  man  in  his  desire  to  see  Napoleon’s  authority  over  Germany 
formally  established,  at  first  declared  that  he  had  not  meant  to 
abolish  the  Germanic  Constitution  ; 1  but  his  qualms  of  conscience 
were  shortlived.  The  ratifications  were  speedily  exchanged, 
and  on  August  1st  four  Electors  and  twelve  Princes  announced 
to  the  Diet  at  Ratisbon  that  they  had  ceased  to  belong  to  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  Plad  Stadion,  now  Foreign  Minister  of 
Austria  in  Cobenzl’s  place,  had  his  way,  there  would  have  been 
no  Holy  Roman  Empire  for  them  to  desert.  He  had  urged 
Francis  to  abandon  the  title  of  his  own  initiative  before  he  was 


1  Cf.  Fisher,  p.  121. 


i8o6]  THE  CONFEDERATION  OF  THE  RHINE  499 


forced  to  do  so.  But  Francis  had  been  slow  to  act,  and  it  was 
not  till  August  6th  that  his  proclamation  renouncing  his  title 
of  Holy  Roman  Emperor  elect,  and  formally  declaring  the  links 
between  himself  and  the  Empire  dissolved,  brought  to  an  end 
even  the  nominal  existence  of  the  great  institution  which 
Charlemagne  had  founded.1 

This  action  on  the  part  of  Francis  II  amounted  to  a  tacit  ac¬ 
knowledgment  of  Napoleon’s  new  creation.  Austria  would  accept 
the  accomplished  fact :  after  all,  her  strength  had  not  depended  on 
her  connection  with  the  Empire,  she  was  following  a  policy  very 
much  like  that  Pufendorf  had  suggested  for  her.2  And  where 
Austria  acquiesced,  it  was  hardly  to  be  expected  that  the  Power 
which  had  concluded  the  Treaty  of  Schonbrunn  and  had  accepted 
its  subsequent  developments,  would  do  otherwise. 

Haugwitz’s  action  in  signing  the  Treaty  of  Schonbrunn  had 
provoked  an  indignant  outcry  at  Berlin,  especially  in  the  more 
bellicose  circles.  The  Council  of  State,  however,  was  not  pre¬ 
pared  to  go  to  the  length  of  disowning  him  even  though  it 
disliked  the  terms  and  wanted  to  get  them  modified.  The 
Prussian  Ministers  wanted  to  get  Hanover,  but  without  com¬ 
mitting  themselves  to  hostility  to  George  III.  They  still  clung 
to  the  notion  that  they  might  mediate  a  peace  between  England 
and  Napoleon,  and  obtain  the  coveted  Electorate  as  the  reward 
for  their  good  offices.  Thus,  true  to  the  Prussian  tradition  of 
sitting  on  the  fence,  they  neither  accepted  nor  rejected  the 
treaty.  They  proposed  to  take  Hanover  and  hold  it  on  deposit 
until  a  general  peace  should  settle  all  questions  at  issue  in 
Europe;  and  accordingly  on  the  departure  (Feb.)  of  Cathcart’s 
expeditionary  force,  Prussian  troops  at  once  reoccupied  the 
Electorate  without  waiting  for  Napoleon  to  signify  his  assent. 
But  it  was  a  dangerous  game  to  play  with  Napoleon.  His 
answer  was  to  occupy  Anspach  and  Baireuth,  and  to  point  out 
to  the  Prussian  envoy  that  as  the  treaty  had  not  been  ratified, 
Prussia  was  at  war  with  France.  This  argument  was  the  more 
cogent  because  in  a  fit  of  ill-advised  economy  Prussia  had  al¬ 
ready  begun  to  demobilise  her  troops.  Meanwhile  the  Emperor, 
though  offering  Hanover  to  Prussia,  was  also  intending  to  use  it 

1  For  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  cf.  Hausser,  ii.  pp.  691  fif.  ;  Zwiedineck- 

Stidenhorst,  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1806-1871,  vol.  i.  pp.  9-12  ;  also  Fisher, 

ch.  v. 

2  Cf.  p.  8. 


500  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1806 


in  the  negotiations  with  the  Whig  Ministry  which  had  just  come 
into  power  in  England  through  Pitt’s  death  (Jan.  23rd,  1806). 
Prussia  thus  found  herself  compelled  by  a  threat  of  immediate 
war  to  sign  a  treaty  pledging  her  to  unqualified  hostility  against 
England.1  This  treaty,  signed  by  the  unfortunate  Haugwitz 
on  February  15th  and  ratified  on  March  3rd,  gave  Prussia 
Hanover,  but  at  the  price  of  barring  the  Elbe  and  Weser  to 
British  ships,  of  giving  up  Anspach  to  Bavaria  without  receiving 
any  compensation  and  of  consenting  to  the  expulsion  of  the 
Bourbons  from  Naples.  The  extent  of  Prussia’s  submissiveness 
may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  French  officers  accompanied 
the  Prussians  to  Hanover  to  see  that  the  exclusion  of  the 
English  was  complete,  that  Hardenberg  was  practically 
dismissed,  under  the  form  of  unlimited  leave  of  absence, 
Haugwitz  replacing  him  in  charge  of  foreign  affairs,  and  that 
Prussia  was  promptly  involved  in  war  with  England,  who 
replied  to  the  exclusion  of  her  goods  by  blockading  the  mouths 
of  the  Elbe  and  Weser  (April  5th),  seizing  over  300  Prussian 
merchantmen,  and  declaring  war  on  Prussia  (April  20th). 
Napoleon  had  certainly  been  successful  in  sowing  dissension 
between  England  and  Prussia;  for,  as  Fox’s  letter  of  April  16th 
to  Talleyrand2  shows,  the  action  of  Prussia  in  the  matter  was 
far  more  bitterly  resented  in  England  than  was  the  part  played 
by  France ;  it  was  only  to  be  expected  that  France — an  open 
and  avowed  enemy — should  seek  to  injure  England  by  all  the 
means  in  her  power.  Prussia,  on  the  other  hand,  was  at  peace 
with  England,  and  her  conduct  was  “viewed  with  pain  and 
disgust.” 

But  if  Prussia  found  herself  in  the  somewhat  humiliating 
position  of  one  of  the  client  states  of  the  French  Empire,  this 
was  little  more  than  was  to  be  expected  from  the  thoroughly 
unsatisfactory  condition  of  the  country.  The  King,  well-meaning 
but  weak,  a  mediocrity  himself  and  content  with  mediocrity  in 
those  around  him,  has  been  well  described  as  “  the  most  respect¬ 
able  but  the  most  ordinary  man  that  has  reigned  over  Prussia.”  3 
He  was  quite  incapable  of  carrying  out  the  reforms  that  were 
so  urgently  needed  by  Prussia,  and  Lombard,  Haugwitz  and 
even  Hardenberg  all  failed  to  rouse  him  to  a  more  vigorous 
policy.  The  most  capable  man  among  the  Prussian  ministers 

1  Cf.  Seeley,  i.  239. 

2  Cf.  Coquelle,  England  and  Napoleon ,  p.  89.  3  Seeley,  i.  195. 


1806]  THE  CONFEDERATION  OF  THE  RHINE  501 


was  undoubtedly  the  Freiherr  von  Stein,  an  Imperial  Knight 
who  had  entered  the  Prussian  service  in  1780,  had  done  well 
in  various  administrative  posts,  notably  in  charge  of  the 
Prussian  acquisitions  in  Westphalia,  which  had  been  entrusted 
to  him  in  September  1802,  while  in  1804  he  had  been  called  to 
the  Ministry  of  Manufactures  and  Commerce.  Yet  not  even 
Stein  could  do  much  under  the  circumstances  which  prevailed. 
The  chief  object  of  his  attacks  was  the  so-called  Cabinet,  a  body 
composed  not  of  the  heads  of  the  various  departments,  but 
of  the  King’s  personal  advisers,  who  without  responsibility  or 
practical  connection  with  the  details  of  administration  really 
decided  on  the  policy  of  the  country.1  Thus  the  ministers  who 
carried  out  the  details  of  the  policy  had  little  share  in  forming 
it,  and  the  Cabinet  intervened  between  them  and  the  King. 
The  system  had  grown  up  under  Frederick  William  II, 
the  Cabinet,  originally  established  by  his  grandfather  as  a 
committee  for  foreign  affairs,2  superseding  the  old  Ministry  of 
State. 

But  this  was  not  all.  Society  was  in  an  unhealthy  condition  ; 
it  had  grown  wealthy  and  luxurious,  and  with  increased  luxury 
it  had  lost  the  martial  and  Spartan  tone  given  it  by  Frederick  II. 
The  Court  was  frivolous  and  foolish.  An  overbearing  military 
set,  domineering  and  bumptious,  was  living  on  the  reputation  of 
past  victories  it  had  not  helped  to  win.  It  was  this  party  which 
called  insistently  for  war.  Its  better  elements  were  summed  up 
in  the  gallant  but  erratic  Prince  Louis  Ferdinand,  whose  lack  of 
self-restraint  and  steadiness  impaired  the  example  of  his  high 
courage  and  enthusiasm.  Typical  of  its  baser  elements  were 
the  arrogant  young  nobles  who  boastfully  sharpened  their 
swords  on  the  steps  of  the  French  Embassy  before  marching 
out  to  Jena. 

The  Prussian  army,  in  which  the  whole  country  reposed  a 
confidence  as  profound  as  it  was  soon  to  be  proved  baseless, 
was  still  in  all  essentials  the  army  of  Frederick  II.  It  had  failed 
to  keep  pace  with  recent  changes.  A  fine  army  on  the  parade- 
ground,  in  the  field  it  represented  an  obsolete  tradition.  When 
Napoleon’s  system  of  requisitions  was  making  war  support  war, 
it  still  depended  in  a  fertile  country  on  magazines  at  fixed  points. 
It  had  no  co-ordinated  divisions  of  all  three  arms.  Its  officers 

1  Cf.  Seeley,  i.  pp.  267  fif. 

2  Hence  the  name  “  Cabinet  Minister  ”  often  applied  to  the  Foreign  Minister. 


502  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1806 


were  for  the  most  part  ignorant  of  their  profession,  and  the 
veterans  of  Frederick’s  school  knew  only  how  to  obey.  The 
rank  and  file  were  drawn  from  the  lowest  classes.  Both  conscript 
and  long  service  at  once,  since  the  numerous  exemptions  made 
twenty  years  the  term  of  service,  the  army  rested  neither  on  the 
sound  moral  basis  of  universal  compulsion  nor  on  the  hardly 
less  sound  foundation  of  voluntary  patriotic  efforts.  It  was  not 
even  national,  for  its  ranks  included  a  very  large  proportion  of 
foreigners.  These  and  other  defects  had  not  escaped  the  notice 
of  many  observers.  Gebhard  von  Scharnhorst,  a  Saxon  by  birth 
who  had  learnt  the  military  art  under  the  Count  of  Lippe-Bucke- 
burg,1  and  had  served  with  distinction  in  the  Hanoverian  army 
before  joining  that  of  Prussia  in  1801,  had  made  some  effort  to 
introduce  reforms  ;  but  the  infallibility  of  the  Frederician  tradition 
was  still  sacrosanct.  Nor  was  it  even  numerically  in  a  satisfactory 
state.  Nominally  nearly  240,000  strong,2  of  whom  186,000  should 
have  formed  the  field  army,  it  was  not  able  at  the  critical  moment 
to  put  more  than  120,000  in  the  field,  Silesia  and  the  new 
acquisitions  in  Poland  and  Westphalia  absorbing  large  forces 
which  were  not  even  mobilised.  And  for  economy’s  sake  in 
each  company  of  infantry  some  twenty-six  men  were  allowed  to 
be  absent  on  furlough,  and  their  efficiency  was  more  than 
doubtful.  Yet  with  this  army  Hohenlohe  and  Brunswick  cheer¬ 
fully  committed  themselves  to  an  offensive  campaign  against 
Napoleon  and  the  Grand  Army. 

At  the  price  of  a  quarrel  with  England,  Prussia  had  obtained 
Hanover.  She  also  found  herself  involved  in  a  conflict  with 
Sweden  for  Pomerania,  which  Napoleon  was  prepared  to  let 
her  take  if  she  would  cede  Mark  to  the  new  Grand  Duchy 
of  Berg.  But  Prussia  was  very  far  from  feeling  satisfied  with 
her  position  ;  she  could  not  but  realise  that  she  held  these  new 
possessions  by  the  good  pleasure  of  Napoleon.  Had  he  failed 
to  grasp  the  meaning  of  her  action  in  1805  ?  Prussia  could  not 
tell  whether  his  professions  of  friendship  were  sincere,  and  she 
looked  with  a  distrustful  and  suspicious  glance  upon  the 
formation  of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine.  Napoleon  cast 
out  suggestions  for  the  foundation  of  a  North  German  Con¬ 
federation  with  Prussia  as  head ;  he  even  hinted  at  an  Imperial 
crown  for  the  Flohenzollern.  But,  strangely  enough,  the  other 

1  Cf.  p.  371. 

2  255  squadrons,  546  batteries,  174  field  and  58  garrison  battalions. 


1 806]  THE  CONFEDERATION  OF  THE  RHINE 


Powers  of  North  Germany  did  not  accept  the  idea  with 
enthusiasm :  it  made  them  eye  Prussia  rather  suspiciously, 
which  was  perhaps  what  Napoleon  intended.  But  the  truth 
would  seem  to  be  that  the  Emperor  was  not  paying  much  heed 
to  Prussia  during  the  early  months  of  1806;  the  organisation 
of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  and  negotiations  with 
England  and  Russia  were  more  than  sufficient  to  occupy  his 
attention.1  There  are  no  grounds  for  supposing  that  his  policy 
was  deliberately  designed  to  drive  Prussia  into  war.  For  the 
moment  it  was  the  question  of  Naples  and  Sicily  which  was 
uppermost  in  his  mind.2  Stuart’s  brilliant  success  over  Reynier 
at  Maida  (July  4th,  1806)  had  imperilled  the  stability  of  Joseph 
Bonaparte’s  new  kingdom  of  Naples,  and  it  was  in  the  hopes 
of  inducing  the  British  to  evacuate  Sicily  that  Napoleon  took 
the  step  which  finally  goaded  the  supine  Frederick  William 
to  take  up  arms.  Not  the  least  important  effect  of  the  failure 
of  the  great  expedition  to  the  Weser  on  which  Pitt  had  founded 
such  high  hopes,  and  which  Austria’s  defeat  and  Prussia’s 
submission  had  made  vain  and  hopeless,  was  that  it  had  served 
as  a  final  blow  to  the  most  persistent  of  Napoleon’s  opponents. 
Pitt’s  death  (Jan.  23rd,  1806)  opened  the  way  to  office  to  the 
Whig  politician  whose  partiality  for  P'rance  had  outlived  even 
the  establishment  of  a  military  despotism  on  the  ruins  of 
Liberty,  Fraternity  and  Equality,  and  in  the  negotiations  which 
Fox  had  promptly  (Feb.  20th)  set  on  foot  in  the  hopes  of 
restoring  peace,  Napoleon  found  Hanover  a  very  useful  asset. 
On  August  6th  the  King  of  Prussia  received  a  letter  from 
Lucchesini,  his  Ambassador  at  Paris,  informing  him  that 
Napoleon  had  offered  to  restore  Hanover  to  George  ill  if  the 
British  would  withdraw  from  Sicily  and  agree  to  the  compen¬ 
sation  of  the  Neapolitan  Bourbons  with  the  Balearic  Islands. 

Such  an  insult  was  more  than  even  Frederick  William  could 
endure.  Public  opinion  in  Prussia  found  vent  in  the  most 
violent  expressions  of  feeling.  There  was  a  loud  cry  for  the 
dismissal  of  Haugwitz,  but  Frederick  William  would  not  comply 
with  it;  and  this  unfortunate  loyalty  to  the  man  who  was 
identified  with  the  Treaty  of  Schonbrunn  prevented  England 
and  Russia  from  reposing  full  confidence  in  Prussia’s  desire  for 
war,  contributed  very  largely  to  keep  Austria  neutral,  and  was 
hardly  calculated  to  inspire  in  the  nation  at  large  a  strong  belief 
1  Cf.  Seeley,  i.  244.  "  Cf.  Rose,  ii.  pp.  79  ff. 


504  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1806 


in  the  King’s  zeal  for  the  cause.  The  Oueen,  Prince  Louis 
Ferdinand,  Generals  Ruchel  and  Phull,  Hardenberg,  Stein  and 
other  leaders  of  the  patriotic  party  did  what  they  could  to 
arouse  national  feeling,  and  Napoleon  materially  assisted  to  fan 
the  flame  of  hostility  to  France  by  his  execution  of  the  Nurem¬ 
berg  bookseller  Palm  (Aug.  25th).  A  pamphlet,  entitled, 
“  Germany  in  her  deep  Humiliation,”  had  been  published  at 
Vienna.  It  was  a  protest  against  the  brutal  conduct  of  the 
French  army  of  occupation  in  the  “  allied  ”  kingdom  of  Bavaria, 
where  their  exactions  rivalled  the  days  of  the  Thirty  Years’  War. 
Palm,  who  was  proved  to  have  sold  copies  of  this  publication, 
was  arrested,  carried  off  to  Braunau,  an  Austrian  town  occupied 
by  French  troops,  tried  by  court-martial  and  shot.  This  brutal 
act  was  intended  to  terrorise  Germany.  Its  effect  was  quite 
the  reverse.  It  excited  violent  indignation,  and  made  Frederick 
William  for  the  moment  the  spokesman  of  German  national 
feeling,  when  he  demanded  that  Napoleon  should  withdraw  his 
armies  behind  the  Rhine. 

During  this  period  negotiations  had  been  going  on  between 
Napoleon  and  the  Czar.  In  July,  Napoleon  had  induced  the 
Russian  envoy  Oubril  to  sign  a  treaty,  but  the  Czar’s  refusal  to 
ratify  it  had  left  the  two  Powers  still  at  war.  Hence  in  challeng¬ 
ing  Napoleon,  Prussia  could  hope  for  Russian  support ;  but 
no  steps  had  been  taken  to  concert  a  plan  of  common  opera¬ 
tions,  and  the  fatuous  strategy  of  the  Prussians  exposed  them 
to  a  disaster  even  more  complete  than  Mack’s.  Inferior  in 
numbers  though  they  were  to  the  190,000  men  whom  Napoleon 
rapidly  concentrated  in  Northern  Bavaria,  the  Prussians  resolved 
to  advance  across  Thuringia  upon  Mayence,  thinking  to  fall  on 
Napoleon’s  communications,  and  so  force  him  to  evacuate 
Southern  Germany  to  recover  the  line  of  the  Rhine.  It  is  need¬ 
less  to  point  out  how  this  exposed  their  own  interior  flank  to 
a  crushing  blow  which  completely  intercepted  their  retreat  to 
Berlin. 

This  advance  would  have  been  justifiable  in  one  event  only, 
if  all  North  Germany  had  risen  on  behalf  of  the  cause.  But 
North  Germany  did  not  rise.  William  VIII  of  Hesse-Cassel, 
Elector  since  1803,  viewed  with  alarm  the  aggrandise¬ 
ment  of  Napoleon,  but  nevertheless  all  efforts  to  induce 
him  to  join  Prussia  failed.  However  his  conduct  dur¬ 
ing  the  critical  period  was  somewhat  ambiguous,  and  his 


JENA  AND  AUERSTADT 


505 


1806] 

failure  to  demobilise  his  army  or  to  exclude  the  Prussians  from 
his  nominally  neutral  territory  brought  down  on  him  the  wrath 
of  Napoleon.  Brunswick,  of  course,  took  part  with  Prussia, 
since  its  Duke  was  in  command  of  the  Prussian  army ;  but  a 
more  important  if  less  willing  ally  was  found  in  Saxony.  The 
Elector  Augustus  Frederick  was  a  pacific  but  rather  feeble 
Prince.  Since  1796  he  had  maintained  a  consistent  neutrality, 
fear  of  Prussia  and  dislike  of  France  alternately  ruling  him. 
His  action  in  joining  Prussia  in  1806  was  to  be  ascribed  more 
to  the  pressure  put  on  him  by  the  near  presence  of  the  Prussian 
army  than  to  any  keenness  in  the  cause.  He  had  to  choose 
between  joining  Prussia  and  fighting  her ;  and  as  at  the  moment 
no  French  were  at  hand  to  help  him,  he  had  no  alternative  but 
to  join  Prussia. 

With  the  addition  of  the  20,000  men  of  whom  the  Saxon 
army  consisted,  Brunswick  and  his  colleague  Hohenlohe  could 
dispose  of  about  140,000  troops.  Concentrated  behind  the 
Elbe  or  even  between  the  Saale  and  Elster  near  Jena  and  Gera, 
this  force  might  have  effected  something;  but  the  impatience 
of  the  army  to  show  the  victors  of  Marengo  and  Austerlitz  that 
the  successors  of  Frederick  II  were  prepared  to  keep  up  the 
traditions  of  Rossbach  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  decision 
to  advance  beyond  this  good  defensive  position.  Moreover, 
it  was  hoped  by  taking  the  offensive  and  covering  the  territories 
of  Hesse-Cassel  to  induce  the  Elector  to  throw  in  his  lot  with 
Prussia.  But  Hohenlohe  and  Brunswick  could  not  even  agree 
on  a  plan.  Brunswick,  wishing  to  threaten  Mayence,  wanted 
to  feint  at  Fulda  with  his  extreme  right,  but  to  move  his  main 
body  forward  on  Hildburghausen  and  Meiningen,  Hohenlohe 
with  his  corps  moving  parallel  on  the  left  by  Saalfeld. 
Hohenlohe  would  have  preferred  a  move  against  the  French 
centre  and  right,  but  his  plan  would  have  equally  committed 
the  Prussians  to  an  advance  with  the  army  in  two  parts, 
separated  by  the  Thuringian  Forest.  The  net  result  was  that 
October  4th  found  the  Prussians  scattered  over  a  front  of  85 
miles,  when  news  of  Napoleon’s  advance  forced  them  to  sus¬ 
pend  their  westward  move.  Riichel  with  25  squadrons  and  12 
battalions  was  far  forward  on  the  way  to  the  Rhine ;  Brunswick 
with  the  90  squadrons  and  60  battalions  of  the  main  army, 
70,000  strong,  was  between  Gotha  and  Erfurt ;  Hohenlohe’s 
corps  lay  in  the  valley  of  the  Upper  Saale,  its  advance-guard 


506  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1806 


at  Saalfeld,  the  Saxons  near  Gera,  the  bulk  of  the  corps  on  the 
left  of  the  11m,  near  Hochdorf. 

Against  a  force  thus  divided  and  leaders  without  a  real  plan, 
Napoleon  was  on  the  point  of  dealing  a  tremendous  blow.  He 
had  his  whole  army  so  admirably  concentrated  on  a  front  of 
38  miles  that  the  whole  force  could  be  collected  at  any  point 
under  48  hours.  Three  roads  led  Northward  from  the  points 
at  which  he  had  concentrated  his  army  for  an  advance.  Soult 
(lVth  corps)  and  Ney  (Vlth),  forming  the  right,  took  the  road  by 
Baireuth  on  Hof;  Bernadotte  (1st),  Davout  (II Ird),  the  Guards 
and  Murat’s  cavalry  that  in  the  centre  on  Saalburg  by  Bamberg 
and  Kronach  ;  on  the  left,  Lannes  (Vth)  and  Augereau  (Vllth) 
moved  through  Coburg  on  Saalfeld.  The  rapidity  and  certainty 
of  the  French  moves  contrasted  sharply  with  the  somewhat 
aimless  operations  of  the  Prussians.  Napoleon  had  seen  the 
weak  spot  in  their  armour,  and  his  blow  at  their  communica¬ 
tions  brought  them  hurrying  back  to  avoid  being  cut  off  from 
the  Elbe.  But  Napoleon  was  much  too  quick  for  them.  On 
October  9th,  Murat  and  Bernadotte  drove  Tauentzien  with 
Hohenlohe’s  vanguard  out  of  Schleiz,  Soult  reached  Hof, 
Lannes  on  the  left  getting  to  Grafenthal.  On  the  10th,  Prince 
Louis  Ferdinand,  making  a  stand  at  Rudolstadt  to  cover 
Hohenlohe’s  return  to  the  Saale,  was  defeated  by  Lannes.  He 
himself  fell  in  the  action,  but  Hohenlohe  managed  to  concentrate 
the  Saxons,  Tauentzien  and  his  own  main  body  near  Jena. 
The  bulk  of  Napoleon’s  army  was  now  over  the  Thuringian 
Forest,  the  centre  having  pushed  on  as  far  as  Auma,  while 
on  the  right  Soult  had  reached  Plauen.  Advancing  to  Gera 
next  day  and  meeting  with  no  opposition  Napoleon  realised  that 
he  had  got  between  the  Prussians  and  the  Elbe :  he  therefore 
thrust  his  centre  forward  to  Naumburg,  which  Davout  secured 
on  the  morning  of  the  12th,  while  he  called  in  the  right  by 
the  cross-road  from  Plauen  to  Gera.  On  the  same  day,  the 
1 2th,  Lannes  moved  down  the  left  bank  of  the  Saale  on  Jena, 
where  Hohenlohe  was  standing  inactive  and  wasting  precious 
time.  Had  he  pushed  forward  against  the  French  he  might 
have  caught  them  more  or  less  dispersed,  but  he  stood  still 
with  the  idea  of  covering  the  main  body  under  Brunswick,  who 
were  moving  by  Weimar  on  Auerstadt  and  Naumburg.  This 
inactivity  on  his  part  continued  next  day.  Not  an  effort  did 
he  make  to  dispute  the  all-important  position  of  the  Land- 


JENA  AND  AUERSTADT 


507 


1806] 

grafenberg,  which  Lannes  secured  and  with  it  the  passage  of 
the  Saale  at  Jena.  Meanwhile  Napoleon  was  concentrating  the 
corps  of  Soult,  Ney  and  Augereau  at  Jena,  Davoht  was  moving 
forward  from  Naumburg  to  seize  the  defile  of  Kosen,  Berna- 
dotte  was  making  for  Dornberg  to  secure  that  passage  and 
to  connect  up  Napoleon  with  Davout,  who  from  being  the 
centre  had  become  the  extreme  right  of  the  French. 
Brunswick  also  was  moving  on  Kosen ;  but  the  division  detailed 
to  secure  that  point  failed  to  achieve  its  purpose.  Riichel 
following  in  rear  of  Brunswick  reached  Weimar. 

Thus  the  French  on  the  East  of  the  Saale  threatened  to 
interpose  between  the  Prussians  and  their  base,  and  were 
prepared  to  dispute  any  attempt  by  Brunswick  to  recover  his 
line  of  communications.  Had  the  Prussian  commander  known 
their  situation,  which  he  does  not  seem  to  have  done,  he  might 
have  retreated  straight  to  Magdeburg  and  there  crossed  the 
Elbe ;  but  such  a  move  would  have  left  Berlin  and  Dresden 
equally  open  to  Napoleon’s  attacks. 

Of  the  twin  battles  of  October  14th,  that  of  Jena  was  no 
disgrace  to  the  Prussian  army,  for  Hohenlohe’s  50,000  men 
made  a  very  gallant  resistance  to  the  90,000  whom  Napoleon 
brought  against  them.  Their  commander  was  not  a  little  to 
blame  for  his  failure  to  drive  Lannes  off  the  Landgrafenberg 
on  the  previous  afternoon  ;  for  if,  instead  of  having  their  leading 
corps  already  in  position  on  the  Eastern  edge  of  the  plateau 
which  commands  the  passage  of  the  Saale,  the  French  had 
had  to  force  their  way  up  its  steep  slopes,  the  issue  of  the  day 
might  have  been  very  different.  But  Hohenlohe,  intending 
to  retreat  as  soon  as  he  had  covered  Brunswick’s  march  from 
a  flank  attack,  had  remained  inactive,  and  the  French  by  great 
exertions  had  succeeded  in  bringing  guns  and  reinforcements 
up  the  precipitous  path  from  the  valley  below.  Early  on  the 
14th  Lannes  opened  the  battle  by  falling  on  Hohenlohe’s 
vanguard  at  Closwitz.  There  was  sharp  fighting  in  the  fog 
but  by  10  a.m.  Lannes  had  secured  the  line  from  Lutzeroda 
to  Closwitz,  and  had  gained  sufficient  room  for  the  other  corps 
to  deploy  into  line  as  they  came  up  on  to  the  plateau.  Soult’s 
leading  division  had  already  pushed  up  the  Rauthal,  but  was 
closely  engaged  with  a  Prussian  detachment  from  Rodingen  ;  while 
Augereau,  taking  the  line  of  the  Muhlthal  and  Schneckethal,  was 
in  action  with  the  Saxons  who  formed  Hohenlohe’s  right :  Ney, 


5o8  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1806 


following  Lannes,  thrust  his  leading  division  forward  between  those 
of  Lannes,  and  the  French  front  line  now  advanced  against  the 
Vierzehn  Heiligen-Isserstadt  position  just  as  Hohenlohe  delivered 
a  counter-attack.  This  was  about  1 1  a.m.,  and  for  a  couple 
of  hours  the  battle  was  evenly  contested,  till  two  more  of  Soult’s 
divisions  coming  up  advanced  on  the  right  of  Gazan’s  division 
of  Lannes  and  began  to  press  back  the  Prussian  left.  At 
the  same  time  another  of  Ney’s  divisions  reinforced  the  centre, 
and  the  Guards  moved  forward  against  Vierzehn  Heiligen. 
In  vain  Hohenlohe  hurled  his  cavalry  in  fruitless  charges  against 
the  advancing  French ;  attacking  without  proper  combination, 
making  spasmodic  and  not  united  efforts,  even  their  furious  on¬ 
slaughts  could  not  stem  the  advance,  while  the  Prussian  infantry, 
already  shaken  by  the  fire  of  the  French  artillery,  gave  way 
as  the  French  advanced.  It  was  at  this  moment  that  Riichel’s 
battalions  came  up  from  Weimar.  The  wisest  course  would 
have  been  to  employ  them  to  cover  the  retreat,  but  Hohenlohe, 
not  content  with  this,  made  a  counter-attack  on  Ney’s  leading 
division,  a  rash  and  ill-advised  stroke  which  involved  Riichel 
in  the  general  disaster.  Beaten  all  along  the  line,  Hohenlohe’s 
army  fell  back  in  disorder  on  Weimar,  pursued  by  Murat’s 
cavalry,  which  had  just  arrived  on  the  scene.  Still  though 
beaten  the  Prussians  had  fought  well.  The  precision  and 
accuracy  of  their  manoeuvres  had  excited  the  admiration  of 
their  enemy,  even  if  their  lines  had  smacked  too  much  of  the 
parade-ground  and  had  proved  no  match  for  the  heavy 
columns,  preceded  by  dense  clouds  of  skirmishers,  in  which 
the  French  attacked.  Hohenlohe  rather  than  his  army  had 
been  principally  at  fault ;  his  failure  to  fall  on  Lannes  on  the  13th 
had  allowed  the  French  to  gain  access  to  the  Landgrafenberg 
on  the  14th,  the  men  had  fought  well  against  superior  numbers, 
and  but  for  the  tame  surrenders  and  the  complete  military 
collapse  to  which  Jena  was  the  prelude,  the  Prussian  army 
would  have  no  cause  to  be  ashamed  of  their  performance  there. 

Meanwhile  a  fight  of  a  very  different  nature  had  been  raging 
a  few  miles  to  the  Northward.  About  8  a.m.  Brunswick’s 
vanguard  under  Schmettau  came  into  contact  with  Davout’s 
leading  division  near  Hassenhausen.  Brunswick  hurried  to;the 
front  to  try  to  secure  the  hills  on  his  right  and  to  sweep  Davoilt 
from  his  path,  while  Bliicher’s  cavalry  assailed  the  French  on 
the  other  wing.  But  Davofit’s  infantry  stood  firm,  and  beat  off 


AUSTERLITZ  Dec  3^  1805. 


Bellawitz 
ToBruna 

Schlapsnit: 


•w 


{  ))l 

1  ))\  fg  (■ 

llawitz^J  >1  >  rju  ^ 

lasbwi^^l 


Kobelnit1 


Sokol  nit 


JENA.  Oct.  14*  1806 


'to  V  . 


JENA  AND  AUERSTADT 


509 


1806] 

all  Bliicher’s  attacks.  Brunswick  brought  up  reinforcements 
to  renew  the  effort,  but  fell  mortally  wounded  ;  and  his  fall 
spread  confusion  through  the  Prussian  ranks.  This  gave  time 
for  the  second  division  of  Davout’s  corps,  that  of  Friant,  to 
come  up  and  to  take  up  its  position  on  the  right  of  its  hard- 
pressed  comrades  of  Gudin’s  division.  Again  and  again  the 
Prussians  attacked,  but  their  superior  numbers  failed  to  shake 
Davout.  There  was  a  want  of  co-ordination  about  the  Prussian 
efforts,  since  there  was  no  commander-in-chief ;  and  when  about 
noon,  when  Morand  brought  up  the  third  division  and  began 
to  extend  to  the  Southward  of  Hassenhausen,  Davout  actually 
ventured  a  counter-attack,  though  altogether  he  had  only  27,000 
to  at  least  40,000  Prussians.  Outflanked  by  the  cavalry  of 
Vialannes,  the  Prussian  left  fell  back  in  confusion  ;  and  the  right 
followed  its  example,  though  in  much  better  order,  both  taking 
the  road  to  Weimar,  a  direction  which  before  long  brought  them 
into  contact  with  the  fugitives  of  Hohenlohe’s  army  fleeing 
from  Murat.  On  that  Brunswick’s  corps  also  went  to  pieces. 
All  cohesion  was  lost,  and  the  energetic  pursuit  of  the  French 
cavalry  completed  what  the  battle  had  begun.  Mollendorf 
with  10,000  men  surrendered  at  Weimar  on  the  15th;  16,000 
under  Kalkreuth  laid  down  their  arms  at  Erfurt  next  day. 
Eugene  of  Wtirtemberg,  standing  at  bay  at  Halle  to  let  the  rest 
of  the  army  cross  the  Elbe,  was  cut  to  pieces  by  Bernadotte 
(Oct  17th).  And  while  the  relics  of  the  Prussian  armies  were 
being  thrust  North  and  West  in  utter  demoralisation,  making 
for  Magdeburg,  Napoleon  had  secured  a  shorter  route  to  the 
Prussian  capital,  and  Davout’s  corps  had  secured  the  passage  of 
the  Elbe  at  Wittenberg  and  was  marching  upon  Berlin  with  all 
speed  (Oct.  20th). 

But  Jena  and  Auerstadt  were  as  nothing  to  the  disgraces 
which  were  in  store  for  the  Prussian  army.  Fortress  after  fortress, 
well  supplied,  strongly  garrisoned  and  capable  of  a  good  defence, 
surrendered  tamely  on  the  first  summons  without  firing  a  shot. 
Had  strong  places  like  Spandau,  Ciistrin  and  Magdeburg 
made  as  good  a  defence  as  did  Bliicher  at  Liibeck,  to  which 
distant  spot  the  old  veteran  managed  to  draw  two  French  corps 
in  pursuit  of  the  20,000  men  he  had  rallied,  the  French  might 
have  been  detained  till  the  Russians  could  reach  the  Oder. 
Their  feeble  surrender  is  almost  without  a  parallel  in  history. 

Hohenlohe  had  by  October  20th  collected  about  45,000  men 


510  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1806 


at  Magdeburg,  but  they  were  completely  demoralised.  The 
administration  had  broken  down,  the  men  were  without  pay 
and  without  food,  their  organisation  and  discipline  had  gone 
to  pieces.  Accordingly  the  news  that  Soult,  Ney,  Bernadotte 
and  Murat  were  within  a  day’s  march  of  Magdeburg  drove 
Hohenlohe  from  the  town.  Leaving  over  20,000  men  behind 
him,  he  started  for  Stettin  through  Rathenow  and  Ruppin ;  but 
before  he  could  reach  the  Oder  he  was  headed  off  by  Murat 
and  Lannes,  who  on  October  28th  barred  his  path  at  Prenzlau, 
not  30  miles  from  Stettin.  With  10,000  dispirited  and  broken 
men  he  surrendered.  Spandau  (Oct  25th)  had  already  opened 
its  gates;  Davout  occupied  Berlin  on  the  25th,  Napoleon  arriv¬ 
ing  there  next  day ;  Stettin  surrendered  upon  a  mere  summons 
by  Lasalle’s  light  cavalry  on  the  29th  ;  and  though  Bliicher,  who 
was  following  Hohenlohe  with  20,000  men,  managed  to  make  his 
way  to  Liibeck,  he  was  forced  to  lay  down  his  arms  to  Soult 
and  Bernadotte  on  November  7th.  A  day  later  Magdeburg, 
a  fortress  which  should  have  been  capable  of  a  longer  defence, 
capitulated  to  Ney.  For  once  in  a  way  a  bulletin  of  Napoleon’s 
was  in  prosaic  agreement  with  the  facts  when  on  November  12th 
he  announced  “  the  whole  of  the  Prussian  monarchy  is  in  my 
power.”  But  for  the  garrisons  in  Silesia,  Eastern  Pomerania 
and  the  Polish  provinces,  the  famous  Prussian  army  had  been 
swept  out  of  existence,  while  Prussia’s  one  ally  in  Northern 
Germany  had  been  detached  from  her  cause  by  Napoleon’s 
adroit  courtesy  to  his  Saxon  prisoners.  Well  aware  of  the 
dilemma  with  which  the  Prussian  ultimatum  had  confronted 
Frederick  Augustus,  Napoleon  saw  that  in  the  Court  of 
Dresden  he  might  find  a  useful  ally.  On  October  21st  he 
announced  that  there  would  be  no  more  hostilities  against 
the  Saxons ;  and  though  the  Electorate  and  the  Saxon  Duchies 
were  taken  in  charge  by  French  officials  and  remained  in  French 
occupation  till  the  end  of  the  war,  being  subjected  to  the  payment 
of  an  indemnity  of  25  million  francs  and  to  equally  heavy  con¬ 
tributions  in  kind,  Napoleon  had  little  difficulty  in  separating 
Saxony  from  Prussia  and  securing  her  adherence  to  the  Con¬ 
federation  of  the  Rhine.  This  body  had  already  (Sept.) 
been  enlarged  by  the  adhesion  of  the  Elector  of  Wurzburg;  it 
now  had  not  only  the  Elector  of  Saxony  added  to  its  numbers 
with  the  title  of  King  (Dec.  nth),  but  the  five  Dukes  of  the 
Ernestine  line  followed  his  example  (Dec.  15th).  Contingents 


l8o6] 


JENA  AND  AUERSTADT 


5H 

amounting  in  all  to  over  25,000 1  were  thus  placed  at  Napoleon’s 
disposal,  while  the  deposition  of  the  Elector  of  Hesse  (Nov. 
4th),  of  the  House  of  Brunswick — the  old  Duke  died  of  his 
wounds  shortly  after  Auerstadt  and  was  succeeded  by  his 
son  Frederick  William,  who  fell  at  Ouatre  Bras  nine  years 
later — and  of  William  Frederick  of  Orange,  who  thus  lost  the 
Principality  of  Fulda-Corvey  he  had  received  in  1803,  placed 
much  territory  in  North-Western  Germany  at  Napoleon’s 
disposal. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  German  history  the  subsequent 
events  of  the  campaign  of  1806-1807  are  of  less  importance 
than  the  effects  of  the  collapse  of  Jena,  Auerstadt,  Prenzlau 
and  Magdeburg  on  the  government  of  Prussia.  A  Prussian  corps 
played  an  honourable  part  in  a  campaign  fought  out  in  terri¬ 
tory  German  by  rule  if  Polish  by  geography,  but  its  part  was 
little  more  than  that  of  the  auxiliary  of  the  Russians  ;  and  when 
the  defeat  of  Friedland  decided  the  Czar  to  come  to  terms  with 
Napoleon,  Prussia  had  to  acquiesce  in  the  terms  which  her  Eastern 
neighbour  was  prepared  to  accept  for  her.  The  first  effect  of 
the  defeats  was  a  change  in  the  Prussian  ministry.  Haugwitz 
retired  to  ponder  at  leisure  on  the  fruits  of  the  Treaty  of 
Schonbrunn.  His  post  as  Foreign  Minister  was  offered  to 
Stein  (Nov.  29th),  with  which  an  intricate  negotiation  began. 
Stein  and  his  friends  sought  to  use  the  opportunity  to  induce 
the  King  to  abandon  his  Cabinet 2  in  favour  of  a  Council  com¬ 
posed  of  the  responsible  Ministers.  The  King  went  so  far 
in  the  direction  of  compliance  that  he  agreed  to  appoint  Riichel 
War  Minister,  von  Zastrow  Foreign  Minister,  and  Stein  Finance 
Minister ;  but  he  desired  to  retain  Beyme  as  Secretary  of  this 
new  Cabinet  Council,  and  on  this  rock  the  negotiations  foundered. 
Stein  would  not  tolerate  Beyme  ;  the  King  refused  to  dispense 
with  him.  Finally,  on  January  3rd  Stein  was  dismissed.  On 
his  refusal  to  take  office,  von  Zastrow,  Voss  and  Schrotter  formed 
a  ministry,  Beyme  acting  as  Secretary  and  Hardenberg 
attending  its  meetings.  Mainly  through  the  influence  of  the 
Czar,  who  preferred  Hardenberg  to  Zastrow,  the  former  became 
First  Cabinet  Minister  in  April  1807,  while  in  addition  to  the 
control  over  foreign  affairs,  domestic  affairs  were  also  entrusted 
to  his  charge,  so  that  he  was  practically  Premier.3 

1  Wurzburg  2000,  King  of  Saxony  20,000,  Saxon  Dukes  3300.  2  Cf.  p.  501. 

3Cf.  Seeley,  i.  291,  339,  etc.  ;  also  Zwiedineck-Siidenhorst,  i.  p.  59. 


512  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1806 


The  substitution  for  Haugwitz  of  members  of  the  party 
which  favoured  opposition  to  Napoleon  had  done  something 
to  restore  public  confidence,  which  was  also  encouraged  by  the 
rejection  of  Napoleon’s  offer  of  an  armistice.  It  would  have 
bound  Prussia  but  not  him,  and  the  terms  which  he  offered 
Prussia  were  too  humiliating.  Frederick  William,  therefore, 
rather  than  purchase  peace  at  the  price  of  surrendering  his 
provinces  West  of  the  Elbe  and  joining  Napoleon  in  a  close 
alliance  against  Russia,  resolved  to  continue  the  struggle  as 
best  he  might,  with  the  resources  of  his  Eastern  provinces 
and  relying  on  Russian  support. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 


FRIEDLAND,  TILSIT  AND  ERFURT 

THE  utter  failure  of  the  Prussian  fortresses  to  detain  the 
French  after  Jena  made  it  quite  impossible  for  Frederick 
William  to  attempt  to  maintain  the  line  of  the  Oder.  With 
barely  20,000  men,  all  whom  Kalckreuth  and  Lestocq  had 
managed  to  collect  from  the  Eastern  provinces,  he  fell  back 
across  Poland  towards  his  Russian  allies  ;  and  Napoleon,  pushing 
Eastward  with  the  bulk  of  the  Grand  Army,  found  himself  on 
the  Vistula  before  the  end  of  November.  On  the  30th,  Murat 
secured  Warsaw,  the  Russians  under  Bennigsen  retiring  up  the 
Narew,  while  Lestocq’s  Prussians  on  the  right  evacuated  Thorn, 
which  Ney  occupied.  The  first  half  of  December  saw  the 
French  establish  themselves  on  the  Vistula,  one  corps  under 
Jerome  moving  up  the  Oder  into  Silesia  to  reduce  that  province, 
another  under  Mortier  remaining  in  Mecklenburg  and  Pomerania 
to  secure  the  coast  fortresses.  During  this  period  reinforcements 
joined  Bennigsen  and  emboldened  him  to  advance  from  Ostrolenka 
to  Pultusk,  pushing  Lestocq  forward  to  regain  Thorn.  Napoleon 
determined  to  fall  upon  him,  and  about  December  20th  he  set 
his  army  in  motion.  On  the  right  Davout  and  Lannes  advanced 
against  Bennigsen’s  position  at  the  confluence  of  the  Narew  and 
Bug;  in  the  centre  Soult  and  Augereau,withBernadotte  in  support, 
moved  on  Buxhowden’s  corps,  which  was  along  the  Ukra ;  on 
the  left  Ney  tackled  Lestocq.  Between  December  22nd  and  26th 
there  was  some  heavy  fighting.  Napoleon’s  effort  to  surround 
the  enemy  resulted  in  his  thrusting  out  his  wings  too  far  apart ; 
and  when  Lannes  tried  to  intercept  at  Pultusk  the  retreat  of  the 
Russian  centre  from  Golymin  (Dec.  26th),  Bennigsen  thrust  him 
aside,  and  Galitzin,  though  roughly  handled  by  Davout  and 
Augereau  at  Golymin,  managed  to  get  away.  With  the  retreat 
of  the  Russians  towards  the  Niemen,  operations  came  to  a 
standstill.  The  Grand  Army  wanted  rest,  and  the  state 
of  the  country  was  such  as  to  make  operations  imprac- 
33 


514  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1807 

ticable.  The  Polish  mud  had  baffled  Napoleon’s  well-laid 
plans. 

About  a  month  later,  operations  were  resumed.  Bennigsen 
made  an  advance  against  the  corps  on  the  French  left  which 
were  covering  the  siege  of  Dantzic.  This  was  being  carried  on 
by  Lefebvre  with  the  contingents  of  the  Confederation  and  the 
Poles,  who  had  flocked  to  Napoleon’s  standard  in  the  hopes 
that  he  would  undo  the  work  of  1 772  and  1795*  One  of  the 
covering  corps,  Ney’s,  had  just  anticipated  the  Russian  advance 
by  a  dash  at  Konigsberg.  However,  Lestocq  had  repulsed  it 
at  Bartenstein  (Jan.  20th  to  23rd),  and  if  Bennigsen  had  moved 
with  greater  speed  Ney  might  have  been  cut  off.  As  it  was,  the 
Russian  advance  miscarried.  Bernadotte  checked  it  in  front 
along  the  Passarge,  while  Napoleon  swung  up  his  centre  and 
right  to  the  help  of  the  left.  The  French  corps  were  posted 
from  Ostrolenka  on  the  Narew  by  Neidenberg  to  Osterode,  and 
their  Northward  movement  threatened  Bennigsen’s  interior 
flank.  Only  by  a  prompt  retreat  could  he  save  his  communica¬ 
tions  from  being  severed.  Murat,  pressing  forward,  managed  to 
bring  the  Russian  rearguard  to  action  at  Hof  on  February  6th, 
upon  which  Bennigsen  turned  to  bay  at  Eylau.  Two  days  of 
desperate  and  even  fighting  and  terrible  slaughter  ended  with 
the  arrival  of  Lestocq’s  Prussians  just  in  time  to  paralyse 
Davout’s  turning  movement  against  the  Russian  left,  whereby 
the  unmolested  retreat  of  the  Russians  to  Konigsberg  was 
secured.  Napoleon,  left  in  possession  of  the  field,  had  to 
content  himself  with  making  the  most  he  could  on  paper  out 
of  this  Pyrrhic  victory.  His  position  was  none  too  satisfactory. 
The  numbers  of  the  Grand  Army  had  been  reduced  by  nearly 
a  half  by  losses  in  battle  and  by  disease.  Its  discipline  had 
become  relaxed  ;  the  difficulties  of  making  war  support  war  in  a 
country  as  poor,  as  thinly  peopled,  and  as  roadless  as  Poland 
were  enormous  and  taxed  to  the  utmost  the  powers  of  the 
Emperor.  He  had  to  put  forth  all  his  great  powers  of  organisa¬ 
tion  to  restore  the  Grand  Army  to  an  efficient  condition,  to  collect 
adequate  reserves  and  make  ready  for  a  fresh  advance;  and 
meanwhile  he  had  to  continue  the  sieges  of  Dantzic,  of  Colberg, 
so  bravely  defended  by  Gneisenau,  and  of  the  Silesian 
fortresses. 

This  juncture  was  Austria’s  opportunity.  If  Francis  II  had 
thrown  his  sword  into  the  scale  in  April  1 807,  his  intervention 


1807]  FRIEDLAND,  TILSIT  AND  ERFURT 


5T5 


might  have  been  decisive.  But  even  in  1809  Austria  was  hardly 
ready,  and  in  1807  the  reforms  of  Archduke  Charles  had  had 
no  time  to  bear  fruit,  so  that  his  voice  was  strong  for  the  main¬ 
tenance  of  peace,  while  even  Stadion  shrank  from  the  prospect 
of  war.  What  had  alarmed  Austria  and  threatened  to  rally  her 
to  the  Allies  was  Napoleon’s  encouragement  of  the  aspirations 
of  the  Boles  ;  but  Napoleon  hastened  to  assure  Francis  that  he 
would  do  nothing  to  cause  trouble  in  Austrian  Poland,  and  with 
this  assurance  Francis  was  unwisely  content. 

Thus  during  the  critical  spring  months  of  1807,  Austria 
adhered  to  the  same  line  of  action  which  had  ruined  Prussia  in 
1805.  There  was  another  Power  whose  conduct  was  scarcely 
less  short-sighted.  England  did  indeed  join  the  alliance  which 
Russia  and  Prussia  reaffirmed  at  Bartenstein  (April  26th),  but 
too  late  (June  27th)  to  make  her  share  in  the  league  of  any 
practical  value.  When  40,000  or  even  25,000  men  flung  ashore 
in  l  lanover  or  Pomerania  in  rear  of  the  Grand  Army  might  have 
been  of  the  greatest  service,  for  Hesse  and  Hanover  were  ripe 
for  revolt,1  and  Stralsund  in  Swedish  Pomerania  would  have 
formed  an  effective  base  for  an  attack  on  Mortier’s  corps,  the 
“  Ministry  of  All  the  Talents”  had  confined  itself  to  empty  pro¬ 
mises  of  aid.  Much  might  have  been  done  to  succour  Dantzic 
and  Colberg  and  enable  them  to  prolong  their  defence,  but  no 
effective  steps  were  taken.  With  the  advent  of  the  Portland 
Ministry  to  power  (April),  Canning  assumed  charge  of  the 
Foreign  Office,  Castlereagh  of  the  administration  of  the  Army, 
and  a  better  era  seemed  to  have  dawned ;  but  before  this 
more  vigorous  ministry  could  give  effect  to  its  policy  of  send¬ 
ing  active  help  to  our  allies,  the  Third  Coalition  had  received 
its  death-blow. 

Bennigsen  would  have  been  well  advised  had  he  adhered  to 
his  original  plan  of  campaign  for  1807  and  stood  on  the  defensive 
behind  the  Pregel  until  reinforcements  could  join  him  from  the 
interior  of  Russia,  until  England  and  Sweden  might  make  an 
effective  diversion  in  Pomerania,  or  Austria  be  induced  to  join 
the  Allies.  But  Bennigsen  was  a  strange  mixture  of  vigour  and 
indecision.  He  was  tempted  by  the  exposed  position  of  Ney’s 
corps  at  Gutstadt  on  the  Alle  to  try  again  the  stroke  that  had 
failed  in  January.  But  it  was  really  too  late.  Neisse  had  fallen, 
and  of  all  the  Silesian  fortresses  only  Kosel  and  Glatz  were 

1  Castlereagh  Correspondence,  vi.  pp.  169,  21 1,  etc. 


5 1 6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1807 


holding  out.  Dantzic’s  brave  defence  had  come  to  an  end  on 
May  26th,  which  had  set  the  French  left  free  to  advance. 
Nevertheless,  Bennigsen  took  the  offensive.  Ney  retired  before 
him ;  higher  up  the  Passarge,  Soult  and  Bernadotte  held  their 
ground,  and  the  Emperor  set  all  his  forces  in  motion  to  utilise 
the  chance  Bennigsen’s  rash  move  had  given  him,  Hastily  the 
Russian  general  fell  back  along  the  right  bank  of  the  Alle,  the 
French  pushing  forward  along  the  opposite  bank  in  hopes  of 
cutting  off  his  retreat  to  Konigsberg.  At  Heilsberg  (June  10th), 
Soult  and  Murat  brought  him  to  action ;  but  so  savage  a  stand 
did  the  Russians  make  that  only  the  arrival  of  Lannes  prevented 
the  battle  from  ending  in  a  French  defeat.  From  Heilsberg, 
Bennigsen  continued  his  march  along  the  right  bank  of  the 
Alle,  which  here  makes  a  great  bend  to  the  East  and  North,  so 
that  the  French,  moving  across  the  chord  while  he  followed  the 
arc,  were  able  to  outstrip  him.  On  the  13th  he  crossed  to  the 
left  bank  only  to  find  his  way  barred  by  the  corps  of  Lannes. 
Friedland  was  a  battle  Bennigsen  should  never  have  fought. 
It  would  have  been  wiser  to  have  fallen  back  behind  the 
Pregel  and  united  there  with  Lestocq’s  corps,  which  had  been 
moving  parallel  with  the  Russians  but  nearer  the  sea.  Better 
even  to  have  abandoned  Konigsberg  than  to  have  given  Napoleon 
the  opportunity  to  dictate  terms  at  Tilsit  as  the  result  of  his 
victory  at  Friedland.  For  Friedland  removed  from  Alexander’s 
mind  the  last  inclination  to  continue  resisting.  Dislike  for 
England,  which  had  done  so  little  for  her  allies  and  yet  enforced 
against  them  a  most  stringent  maritime  code,1  admiration  for 
Napoleon,  and  a  real  hatred  of  war,  all  went  for  much  with  him. 
The  party  at  the  Russian  Court  which  had  all  along  favoured 
peace,  Czartoriski,  the  Grand  Duke  Constantine,  Kurakin  and 
others,  was  now  in  the  ascendant.  A  week  after  the  battle  the 
armistice  of  Tilsit  was  concluded.  Four  days  later  (June  25th), 
Napoleon  and  Alexander  had  their  famous  interview,  and  on 
July  9th  the  Peace  of  Tilsit  restored  peace  to  the  Continent  and 
placed  North  Germany  at  the  mercy  of  Napoleon.  The  Czar 
did  indeed  insist  on  certain  concessions  in  favour  of  his  unfor¬ 
tunate  ally,  but  the  peace  which  Prussia  had  no  option  but  to 
accept  reduced  the  kingdom  of  the  Hohenzollerns  to  half  its 
former  dimensions.  Not  only  were  the  acquisitions  of  1803 
lost,  but  also  everything  else  West  of  the  Elbe,  including 

1  Cf.  Rose,  ii.  127. 


i8o7]  FRIEDLAND,  TILSIT  AND  ERFURT 


5U 


East  Frisia  which  went  to  Holland,  all  that  was  left  of  Prussia’s 
share  in  the  Cleves-Julich  inheritance,  all  the  gains  made  at 
the  Peace  of  Westphalia  and  at  the  Peace  of  Utrecht.  Not  even 
the  interposition  of  Queen  Louise  could  induce  the  conqueror  to 
leave  Magdeburg  to  his  victim.  Moreover,  the  shares  of  Poland 
acquired  in  1 793  and  U95  were  transformed  into  a  new  state, 
the  Duchy  of  Warsaw.  Dantzic  became  independent;  but  as  it 
was  occupied  by  a  French  garrison,  it  was  really  a  French  city. 
To  sow  dissension  between  Russia  and  Prussia  a  so-called 
“  rectification  of  frontiers  ”  gave  the  Prussian  district  of  Bialystock 
to  the  Czar,  while  Saxony  was  also  made  an  accessory  to  the 
partition  of  Prussia  by  receiving  Cottbus.  One  Power  alone 
Napoleon  forgot  to  conciliate:  he  consented  to  restore  Silesia  to 
Frederick  William  when  he  might  have  won  Austria’s  gratitude 
by  handing  it  over  to  her.  Prussia  was  thus  reduced  to  the 
lands  between  the  Elbe  and  the  Oder  with  Eastern  Pomerania, 
East  and  West  Prussia,  and  Silesia,  about  62,000  square  miles, 
with  rather  under  five  million  inhabitants.  Her  losses  were  the 
more  serious  because  the  lands  West  of  the  Elbe  were  richer  and 
more  productive  than  those  she  retained.  It  was  some  advantage 
that  the  kingdom  in  its  reduced  form  was  at  least  geographically 
united :  there  were  no  outlying  detached  provinces,  hard  to 
defend,  even  harder  to  unite  with  the  central  mass. 

But  territorial  loss  was  by  no  means  the  only  humiliation 
inflicted  on  Prussia.  Napoleon  had  never  imposed  a  peace  on 
a  conquered  enemy  which  did  not  reimburse  him  for  the 
expenses  of  the  conquest,  and  Prussia  was  not  to  escape  the 
common  lot.  Moreover,  while  the  Convention  of  July  12th 
made  the  evacuation  of  Prussia  by  the  French  troops  depend  on 
the  payment  of  an  indemnity,  it  somewhat  strangely  failed  to 
fix  the  amount  to  be  paid.  Of  this  omission  the  usual  explana¬ 
tion  is  negligence  on  the  part  of  Kalckreuth,  the  Prussian 
negotiator;  but  it  is  at  least  probable  that  he  was  tricked  into  it 
by  Napoleon’s  orders,  for  nothing  could  have  suited  the  Emperor 
better.  While  the  debt  remained  unpaid,  Prussia  was  absolutely 
at  his  mercy  and  could  not  even  enjoy  such  shreds  of  inde¬ 
pendence  and  initiative  as  Alexander’s  good  offices  had  seemed 
to  have  secured  her.  That  it  was  such  a  hold  over  Prussia 
which  Napoleon  wanted  even  more  than  the  money,  was  seen 
when  at  last,  in  September  1808,  he  finally  fixed  the  indemnity. 
The  sum  which  he  named,  154,000,000  francs,  was  altogether 


5 1 8  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1807 


beyond  what  Prussia  with  her  diminished  resources  could  hope 
to  pay  for  a  long  time,  and  she  seemed  to  have  before  her  a 
prospect  of  many  years  of  dependence.  What  that  would  mean 
might  be  judged  from  the  dismissal  of  Hardenberg  and  Riichel 
at  the  bidding  of  Napoleon,  and  by  the  enforced  adhesion  of 
Prussia  to  Napoleon’s  great  scheme  for  the  ruin  of  England.  In 
common  with  the  rest  of  Germany,  Prussia  had  to  close  her  ports 
to  British  ships  and  to  fulfil  punctually  the  requirements  of  the 
Berlin  and  Milan  Decrees.  But  there  was  a  touch  of  irony  in 
the  fact  that  among  the  men  whom  Napoleon  nominated  to  fill 
the  vacant  offices,  Zastrow,  Schulenburg  and  Stein,  there  should 
have  been  one  who  was  destined  to  prove  a  far  more  dangerous 
foe  to  the  Napoleonic  regime  than  ever  Hardenberg  had  been. 

The  arrangements  made  at  Tilsit  embraced  a  good  deal 
more  than  the  terms  on  which  Napoleon  was  prepared  to  permit 
Prussia  to  continue  a  maimed  existence.  In  the  alliance  between 
France  and  Russia  which  was  there  concluded,  Napoleon  took 
care  that  the  balance  of  advantage  should  be  on  his  side ;  that 
while  he  avoided  pledging  himself  to  do  anything  for  the  Czar, 
Russia  was  committed  to  the  Continental  System  and  to  making 
the  rest  of  Europe  fall  into  line  with  Napoleon’s  anti-British 
crusade.  Russia  had  also  to  accept  the  alterations  which 
Napoleon  was  making  in  Northern  Germany.  The  principal 
change  which  the  Emperor  proposed  was  the  erection  of  a  new 
kingdom  out  of  the  territory  which  his  despoiling  of  Prussia  and 
his  deposition  of  the  rulers  of  Brunswick,  Hesse-Cassel  and 
Orange-Nassau  had  placed  at  his  disposal.  This  Kingdom  of 
Westphalia,  the  largest  and  the  most  important  of  the  new 
states  created  by  Napoleon  in  Germany,  was  formed  out  of 
the  Prussian  provinces  West  of  the  Elbe,  the  Duchy  of  Brunswick- 
Wolfenbiittel,  the  Electorate  of  Hesse-Cassel  together  with 
Corvey  and  Osnabriick,  the  Southern  portions  of  Hanover,1 
and  smaller  districts  taken  from  Saxony.  From  an  area  of 
rather  over  15,000  square  miles  and  a  population  of  about  a 
couple  of  million,  it  supplied  a  contingent  of  25,000  men  to  the 
Confederation  of  the  Rhine.  Following  the  example  he  had 
set  with  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Berg,  Napoleon  bestowed  this  new 
creation  not  on  any  of  the  existing  dynasties  of  Germany,  but  on 
one  of  his  own  relations,  his  youngest  brother,  the  clever  but 
idle  and  self-indulgent  Jerome. 

1  i.e.  Giiibenhagen  and  Gottingen. 


i8o7]  FRIEDLAND,  TILSIT  AND  ERFURT 


5T9 

Next  in  size  and  importance  to  Westphalia  came  Berg. 
Originally  formed  for  Murat  in  March  1806  out  of  Berg,  which 
Bavaria  ceded  in  exchange  for  Anspach,and  the  portions  of  Cleves 
on  the  right  bank  of  the  Rhine,  Prussia  being  compensated 
with  Hanover,  it  was  largely  increased  after  Tilsit  at  the  expense 
of  Prussia,  receiving  Mark,  Tecklenberg,  Lingen  and  the  Prussian 
share  of  Munster,  though  Murat  had  to  let  the  important  fortress 
of  Wesel  be  incorporated  in  the  French  department  on  the 
opposite  bank  of  the  Rhine.  At  its  greatest  extent  it  amounted 
to  nearly  9000  square  miles  and  contained  1,200,000  inhabit¬ 
ants,  its  contingent  to  the  Confederation's  army,  originally  5000 
men,  being  increased  to  7000  on  the  addition  of  Munster  and 
Mark. 

These  creations  disposed  of  the  bulk  of  the  North  German 
lands  in  the  occupation  of  Napoleon.  They  had  on  coming  into 
his  hands  been  divided  into  seven  military  governments  (Oct.  to 
Nov.  1806),  and  Fulda,  Erfurt  and  the  coast  districts  of  Hanover 
remained  in  this  condition  for  varying  periods  after  the  other 
governments  had  been  incorporated  in  the  more  highly  organised 
states  of  Westphalia  and  Berg.  In  these  military  governments 
the  old  local  organisation  and  customs  remained  more  or  less 
unchanged ;  but  a  superstructure  of  French  rule  was  imposed 
upon  them,  the  general  in  command  being  assisted  by  an 
inspector  and  a  receiver  to  control  the  finances  of  the  district, 
and  to  drain  it  dry  in  the  attempt  to  meet  Napoleon’s  insatiable 
requirements.1  Fulda  after  some  two  years  of  French  rule  was 
given  to  Dalberg  (Feb.  1810)  in  exchange  for  Ratisbon. 
Hanover  itself  and  the  greater  part  of  the  Principality  of  Ltineburg 
were  added  to  Westphalia  in  January  1810,  but  the  remaining 
portions  of  the  Electorate2  were  incorporated  in  the  four  new 
departments  which  Napoleon  added  to  France  in  December 
1810.  These  were  formed  out  of  the  Duchies  of  Oldenburg  and 
Aremberg,  of  the  Hanseatic  towns,  of  the  Principality  of  Salm  and 
the  Northern  portions  of  Westphalia3  and  of  Berg.4  His  object 
in  making  this  arrangement  was  to  bring  the  North  Sea  coast¬ 
line  under  his  own  immediate  rule  for  the  better  enforcement  of 
the  Continental  System,  which  even  his  own  brothers  could  not 


1  Cf.  Fisher,  pp.  I54ff. 

2  The  old  bishoprics  of  Bremen  and  Verden,  the  County  of  Hoya  and  Saxe- 
Lauenberg. 

3  The  Department  of  the  Weser. 


4  The  Department  of  the  Ems. 


520  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1807- 


be  trusted  to  carry  out  as  he  desired.  To  these  districts, 
whether  as  military  governments  or  in  their  later  state  of  French 
departments,  Napoleon  gave  strong  government,  a  modern  code 
of  law,  the  benefits  of  the  social  changes  of  the  Revolution  ; 
but  the  oppression  of  his  tax-gatherers,  the  hardships  entailed 
by  the  Continental  System,  and  the  demands  of  the  conscription 
more  than  sufficed  to  crush  out  any  gratitude  these  reforms  may 
have  earned  him. 

Meanwhile  a  large  number  of  the  minor  Princes  of  Germany 
had  averted  mediatisation  by  a  timely  adhesion  to  the  Con¬ 
federation  of  the  Rhine.  In  April  1807  the  three  branches 
of  the  ducal  House  of  Anhalt,  the  four  Princes  of  Reuss,  the 
two  of  Schwarzburg,  the  two  of  Lippe,  and  the  Prince  of 
Waldeck  had  become  members  of  Napoleon’s  new  creation. 
In  1808  it  was  further  increased  by  Mecklenburg-Strelitz 
(Feb.),  Mecklenburg-Schwerin  (March),  and  Oldenburg  (Oct). 
This  completed  the  reconstitution  of  Germany.  The  Im¬ 
perial  cities  of  Frankfurt  and  Nuremberg  shared  the  fate 
of  the  less  distinguished  members  of  their  order.  They  were 
mediatised,  Frankfurt  being  given  to  Dalberg,  Nuremberg 
to  Bavaria.  Thus  with  the  exception  of  Prussia,  Swedish 
Pomerania  1  and  the  German  dominions  of  the  Hapsburgs,  all 
Germany  was  either  annexed  to  France  or  united  to  her  through 
adhesion  to  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine.  Napoleon,  the 
“  protector  ”  of  the  Confederation,  was  the  real  master  of 
Germany.  So  secure,  indeed,  did  he  feel  of  his  position  in 
Central  Europe  that  he  turned  all  his  attention  to  the 
prosecution  of  his  anti-English  designs ;  to  compelling  Sweden 
and  Portugal  to  close  their  markets  to  English  goods,  to  which 
course  Austria  was  forced  to  pledge  herself  by  the  Convention 
of  February  28th,  1808.  It  was  largely  with  a  view  to  furthering 
his  chances  in  the  great  contest  with  England  by  strengthening 
his  hold  on  the  Mediterranean,  that  he  embarked  on  that 
Spanish  venture  which  was  to  prove  so  important  a  factor  in 
bringing  about  his  overthrow.  The  events  of  July  and  August 
1808  did  not  merely  throw  into  confusion  Napoleon’s  great 

1  This  province  had  been  invaded  by  the  French  in  the  course  of  1807,  and  by 
September  Gustavus  iv  had  been  compelled  to  evacuate  Stralsund  and  Rligen  ;  but 
though  occupied  by  the  French  it  was  ultimately  restored  to  Sweden  in  January 
1S10,  when  Charles  xm,  the  successor  of  Gustavus,  came  to  terms  with  Napoleon 
and  adhered  to  the  Continental  System. 


1808]  FRIEDLAND,  TILSIT  AND  ERFURT 


521 


schemes  for  the  partition  of  Turkey  and  the  subjugation  of 
England  by  an  overland  attack  on  India,  they  were  the  first 
checks  which  Napoleon’s  domination  over  Europe  had  received, 
the  first  intimation  to  the  people  who  were  beginning  to  feel 
and  to  resent  the  heaviness  of  his  rule,  to  the  nations  he  had 
conquered  and  humiliated,  that  his  power  was  not  invincible. 
Austria,  arming  herself  for  the  attempt  to  undo  the  work  of 
Austerlitz  and  Pressburg,  was  inspired  with  fresh  resolution  and 
hope  by  the  news  of  Baylen  and  Vimiero.  Germany  saw  the 
spectacle  of  a  nation  hardly  less  split  up  than  herself  by  local 
and  provincial  jealousies  and  differences,  animated  nevertheless 
by  a  common  spirit  of  resistance  to  the  same  Power  which  had 
dictated  terms  to  the  Hapsburg  and  the  Hohenzollern,  and  which 
numbered  the  Wettin  and  the  Wittelsbach  among  its  dependent 
allies.  The  example  of  Spain  might  prove  contagious. 
Napoleon  could  not  commit  himself  to  the  subjugation  of  the 
Iberian  Peninsula  as  long  as  there  was  a  danger  that  Austria 
might  seize  the  opportunity  of  his  absence  on  the  Ebro  to 
renew  the  struggle  in  the  Danube  valley.  But  since  the 
Spaniards  had  dared  to  resist  his  selection  of  a  monarch  for 
their  benefit,  subdue  them  Napoleon  must,  even  if  he  must  first 
secure  Germany  by  a  new  arrangement  with  Russia  in  which 
the  conditions  would  not  be  so  much  in  his  favour  as  they 
had  been  at  Tilsit.  Negotiations  had  been  going  on  all  the 
year  between  the  signatories  of  the  Peace  of  Tilsit,  but  no 
definite  settlement  had  yet  been  reached.  The  two  sovereigns 
therefore  agreed  to  meet  at  Erfurt  in  September  to  settle  their 
future  relations. 

Among  other  causes  of  friction  between  Alexander  and 
Napoleon  must  be  mentioned  the  treatment  Napoleon  had 
meted  out  to  Prussia.  Alexander,  though  beguiled  with  the 
prospect  of  a  great  expedition  to  the  East,  with  the  idea  of 
acquiring  the  Danubian  Principalities,  and  by  the  notion  of 
accomplishing  the  overthrow  of  England,  was  aggrieved  by 
the  manner  in  which  Napoleon  was  grinding  down  his  former 
ally  Prussia,  for  whom  he  believed  himself  to  have  secured 
good  treatment  at  Tilsit.  He  felt  his  honour  to  some  extent 
implicated. 

Napoleon’s  treatment  of  Prussia  had  been  anything  but 
gentle.  After  naming  112,000,000  francs  as  the  amount  of 
the  indemnity  (March  1808),  he  raised  it  to  154,000,000  on 


522  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1808 


account  of  some  hostile  expressions  in  an  intercepted  letter 
of  Stein’s,  though  even  the  first  sum  would  ffiave  been  more 
than  sufficient  to  keep  Prussia  in  the  position  of  a  debtor  for 
many  years  to  come,  and  therefore  to  postpone  indefinitely  his 
evacuation  of  the  principal  Prussian  fortresses  which  he  held 
as  security  for  payment.  All  attempts  to  get  him  to  modify 
these  terms  had  failed ;  Prince  William’s  mission  to  Paris 
(Jan.  1808)  was  as  unsuccessful  as  Queen  Louise’s  pleading 
for  Magdeburg.  Stein  therefore,  finding  that  the  indemnity 
must  be  paid,  devoted  himself  to  the  task  of  raising  the  money. 
Taxation  was  greatly  increased,  notably  by  introducing  an 
income-tax  after  the  English  model,  70  millions  were  raised 
by  mortgages  on  the  Royal  domains,  over  50  more  by  bills 
which  bankers  were  induced  to  accept.  One  proposal  which 
all  Prussians  joined  in  disliking,  was  that  Prussia  should 
surrender  Royal  domains  to  the  value  of  50  millions ;  but  this 
provision  Stein  had  succeeded  in  evading  when  he  induced 
Daru,  Napoleon’s  financial  representative  at  Berlin,  to  sign 
a  convention  (March  9th,  1808)  by  which  the  French  agreed 
to  receive  pledges  as  a  guarantee  for  the  payment  of  some 
50  millions.1  Napoleon,  however,  gave  no  orders  for  the 
departure  of  the  French  troops  until  Baylen  and  Vimiero 
created  a  demand  for  their  presence  elsewhere.2  Negotia¬ 
tions  were  then  begun  which  resulted  in  the  Convention  of 
September  8th,  1808,  by  which  the  French  evacuated  all 
Prussia  except  the  fortresses  of  Ciistrin,  Glogau  and  Stettin, 
which  were  to  be  held  as  security  for  the  payment  of  the 
arrears  of  the  indemnity.  Heavy  as  this  price  was,  an  even 
greater  humiliation  was  in  store  for  Prussia.  The  Convention 

1  Halisser,  ii.  138. 

2  It  may  be  worth  mentioning  that  besides  the  French  troops  whom  Napoleon 
withdrew  from  Germany  to  the  Peninsula,  he  called  upon  his  German  clients  to 
provide  troops  for  that  service.  One  division  of  infantry  was  required  from  the 
Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  Baden,  Ilesse-Darmstadt  and  Nassau  each  supplying 
two  battalions  and  Frankfort  one.  Westphalia  was  called  upon  to  provide  a 
separate  contingent  of  an  infantry  brigade  and  a  regiment  of  light  cavalry.  More¬ 
over,  there  were  in  the  Peninsula  several  of  the  German  corps  already  in  Napoleon’s 
service:  he  had,  for  example,  raised  a  Hanoverian  Legion  in  1S03  which  formed 
part  of  the  army  which  invaded  Portugal  under  Junot:  most  of  the  men  of  this 
corps  took  service  with  the  English  after  the  capitulation  of  Cintra.  Another  corps 
had  been  raised  out  of  the  Prussian  prisoners  in  1806,  so  that  with  the  King’s  German 
Legion  in  the  British  service,  Germany  was  well  represented  in  the  Peninsula.  Cf. 
Oman’s  History  of  the  Peninsular  War ,  especially  the  appendices  ;  Balagny,  Napoleon 
en  Espagne ,  and  Les  Allemands  sous  les  Aigles  Fran^aises. 


i8oS]  FRIEDLAND,  TILSIT  AND  ERFURT 


523 


fixed  the  establishment  of  her  army  at  42,000,  and  forbade 
the  organisation  of  a  Militia,  or  of  anything  in  the  shape  of 
a  levee  en  masse } 

At  the  end  of  the  month  which  saw  these  galling  restrictions 
imposed  upon  Prussia,  occurred  the  famous  conference  at 
Erfurt  (Sept.  27th  to  Oct.  13th).  It  was  a  brilliant  gathering. 
Most  of  the  Kings  and  Princes  who  formed  the  Confederation 
of  the  Rhine  were  gathered  to  grace  their  “  protector’s  ”  triumph. 
The  presence  of  Goethe  and  his  interview  with  Napoleon,  from 
whom  he  accepted  the  Cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  on  the 
anniversary  of  the  battle  of  Jena,  have  added  a  peculiar  interest. 
Goethe  was  the  literary  representative  of  the  cosmopolitanism 
and  lack  of  patriotism  which  had  enabled  Napoleon  to  attain 
to  his  predominant  position ;  the  coming  literary  movement  was 
to  be  typified  by  men  such  as  Fichte  and  Arndt,  leaders  of  one 
side  of  that  national  movement  in  which  the  reaction  against 
the  triumph  of  Erfurt  culminated. 

But  the  triumph  of  Erfurt  was  of  a  delusive  character. 
Napoleon  was  not  in  a  position  to  dictate  to  Alexander,  and 
he  could  not  succeed  in  inducing  Alexander  to  assist  him  in 
compelling  Austria  to  disarm  and  to  recognise  Joseph  Bona¬ 
parte  as  King  of  Spain.  Alexander  was  not  prepared  to 
complete  the  destruction  of  a  Power  which  he  might  find 
useful  in  the  future,  though  he  declared  himself  ready  to  assist 
Napoleon  should  Austria  take  the  offensive.  But  this  was  only 
purchased  by  Napoleon’s  grudging  consent  to  the  acquisition 
by  Russia  of  the  Danubian  principalities.  That  Napoleon  was 
not  altogether  satisfied  with  his  ally  was  evident  from  his 
refusal  to  make  the  concessions  to  Prussia  which  Alexander 
asked  of  him  :  he  absolutely  refused  to  evacuate  the  fortresses 
on  the  Oder,  and  only  consented  to  reduce  the  indemnity  by 
20,000,000  francs.  Indeed,  in  the  negotiations  of  Erfurt  more 
than  one  hint  was  given  of  the  coming  rupture  between  France 
and  Russia.  The  Convention  merely  reasserted  their  hostility 
to  England,  it  accentuated  rather  than  removed  the  causes 
of  discord.  “  Napoleon,”  it  has  been  well  said,  “  used  the  great 
pageant  of  Erfurt  to  extricate  himself  from  a  dangerous 
position.  In  the  event  of  a  rupture  with  Austria  ...  at  least  the 
neutrality  of  Russia  was  indispensable.”  This  he  had  secured, 

1  Cf.  Oncken,  Allegemeine  Geschichle ,  part  iv.  vol.  i.  pp.  407-40S ;  also  Hausser, 
ii.  pp.  185-190. 


524  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1808 


at  the  price  of  giving  Russia  a  free  hand  against  the  Danubian 
principalities,  a  concession  he  made  with  some  reluctance. 
Moreover,  he  did  not  completely  relax  his  hold  on  Prussia, 
and  to  that  he  owed  in  no  small  measure  his  success  in  weather¬ 
ing  the  storms  which  were  to  beset  him  in  1 809. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 


AUSTRIA’S  EFFORT  TO  OVERTHROW  NAPOLEON 

IF  in  his  dealings  with  Germany  Napoleon  reached  a  pinnacle 
of  power  far  beyond  that  to  which  Louis  XIV  ever  attained, 
it  must  nevertheless  be  admitted  that  the  Bourbon  shov/s  to 
greater  advantage  in  his  dealings  with  Germany  than  does  the 
Corsican.  Bent  on  a  purely  personal  aggrandisement,  consistent 
with  neither  the  interests,  the  welfare,  nor  the  ambitions  of  his 
French  subjects,  Napoleon  had  since  1805  been  striving  to 
establish  on  the  twin  pillars  of  military  force  and  centralised 
autocratic  government  an  entirely  new  order  of  things,  violating 
nationality  and  geography  alike.  Where  Louis  XIV  had  sought 
to  profit  by  the  decay  of  the  old  constitution  of  Germany  rather 
than  to  destroy  it  and  impose  a  new  one  in  its  stead,  where  he 
had  aimed  at  influencing  rather  than  commanding,  where  he  had 
left  the  task  of  keeping  Germany  disunited  to  the  jealousies  of 
the  individual  states,  Napoleon’s  reforms  had  removed  many 
obstacles  to  the  union  of  Germany,  while  his  oppressions  and 
his  aggressions  had  supplied  a  motive  power  to  the  tendencies 
towards  unity.  The  example  of  national  resistance  given  by 
Spain,  the  chance  afforded  to  England  to  intervene  on  the 
Continent  with  effect,  the  specimen  of  his  conduct  presented  at 
Bayonne,  were  useful  lessons  to  the  German  Powers.  It  was 
obvious  that  no  confidence  could  be  placed  upon  Napoleon’s 
promises,  that  no  amount  of  subservience  would  make  a 
dependent  state  secure  even  of  its  existence  if  it  should  suit 
him  to  decide  otherwise. 

But  while  even  the  states  on  which  Napoleon  had  conferred 
benefits  were  liable  to  have  their  constitutions  or  territories 
changed  at  any  moment  by  the  caprice  of  their  “protector,” 
there  was  one  state  which  had  special  reason  to  view  with  alarm 
and  distrust  the  spectacle  of  his  aggressions  on  Spain  and 
Portugal,  of  his  interference  in  the  affairs  of  the  Balkans,  of  his 

occupation  of  the  Papal  States,  and  of  the  harsh  measure  he 

525 


^ 26  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1806- 


meted  out  to  Prussia.  Napoleon  had  beaten  Austria  in  1805,  and 
he  had  treated  her  in  a  way  she  could  not  forgive.  Since  then  he 
had  forced  the  Continental  System  on  her,  and  had  demanded  a 
recognition  of  Joseph  Bonaparte  as  King  of  Spain  ;  but  at  the 
same  time  he  had  not  left  her  so  utterly  crushed  that  she  could 
not  hope  to  rise  again.  And  ever  since  the  Treaty  of  Pressburg 
great  efforts  had  been  made  in  Austria  to  prepare  for  an  appeal 
against  the  verdict  of  1805  by  a  renewal  of  the  struggle  against 
Napoleon.1 

In  few  countries  had  a  few  years  produced  a  greater  change 
than  in  Austria.  Under  the  vigorous  and  enlightened  leader¬ 
ship  of  Count  Stadion  a  new  spirit  was  spreading  through  the 
Hapsburg  dominions.  An  Imperial  Knight  by  origin,  Stadion, 
after  leaving  the  Austrian  diplomatic  service  in  1793  for  a  post 
under  the  Bishop  of  Wurzburg,  had  returned  to  the  Austrian  ser¬ 
vice  in  1801,  had  acted  as  Ambassador  at  Berlin  for  two  years,2  at 
St.  Petersburg  for  two  more,  and  had  been  called  to  the  Ministry 
of  Foreign  Affairs  in  1806.  Keen  and  energetic  as  he  was,  his 
want  of  administrative  training  and  of  acquaintance  with  the 
internal  affairs  of  Austria  to  some  extent  neutralised  his  good 
work  in  arousing  a  national  feeling  of  hostility  to  Napoleon. 
He  did  indeed  succeed  in  making  the  war  thoroughly  popular : 
the  troops  fought  in  1809  with  a  keenness  and  a  tenacity  which 
had  been  lacking  in  1805,  and  the  Hungarian  Diet  of  1808 
displayed  a  rather  unexpected  bellicose  feeling.  It  voted  new 
levies  for  the  line  regiments,  agreed  to  the  formation  of  a  Reserve, 
and  placed  in  the  Emperor’s  hands  the  right  to  summon  an 
“  insurrection  ”  without  the  leave  of  the  Diet  at  any  period  in  the 
next  six  years. 

Stadion  was  warmly  seconded  in  his  efforts  by  Archduke 
Charles.  From  the  misfortunes  of  1805  his  reputation  had 
emerged  unscathed,  and  his  appointment  as  Commander-in-Chief 
(Feb.  10th,  1806)  gave  him,  as  he  was  also  President  of  the  War 
Council  and  Minister  of  War,  a  splendid  opportunity  for  carrying 
out  the  reforms  which  he  knew  to  be  essential  to  the  efficiency 
of  the  Austrian  army.  Incompetent  and  indolent  officers  were 
dismissed,  encouragement  was  given  to  those  who  really  desired 
to  study  their  profession.  The  treatment  and  terms  of  service  of 
the  rank  and  file  were  improved,  the  drill  was  revised,  and  no 
effort  was  spared  to  make  the  Austrian  troops  capable  of  coping 

1  Cf.  Lanfrey’s  Napoleon ,  iv.  pp.  480-482.  2  Cf.  p.  457. 


1809]  AUSTRIA’S  EFFORT  AGAINST  NAPOLEON  527 


with  the  French.  Most  important  was  the  Imperial  Patent  of 
June  9th,  1808,  which  created  a  Landwchr,  composed  of  all  men 
between  nineteen  and  forty  years  of  age.  Still,  though  much  had 
been  effected,  much  more  remained  to  be  done.  The  Staff  was 
inadequate,  the  artillery  and  engineers  weak,  the  transport  and 
commissariat  departments  deficient,  while  the  higher  ranks  of 
the  army  were  to  prove  singularly  barren  of  men  capable  of 
commanding  even  a  corps.  The  worst  deficiencies  lay  in  the 
finances  and  civil  administration,1  but  the  tremendous  expenses 
of  an  armed  peace  made  either  war  or  disarmament  imperative ; 
and  Stadion,  though  himself  free  from  the  bad  traditions  of  the 
repressive  and  illiberal  system  of  Thugut  and  Cobenzl,  had  not 
the  power  or  the  influence  to  remodel  the  old  Austrian  administra¬ 
tion  and  infuse  it  with  his  own  patriotic  enthusiasm. 

The  efforts  which  Austria  was  making  to  rebuild  her  military 
power  had  not  escaped  the  notice  of  Napoleon.  As  has  been 
already  described,2  one  of  the  objects  of  the  interview  of  Erfurt 
had  been  to  induce  the  Czar  to  join  him  in  requiring  Austria  to 
disarm.  But  Alexander  had  been  too  wary  to  aid  Napoleon  by 
destroying  a  Power  which  might  some  day  be  a  useful  ally  for 
Russia,  and  he  had  refused  to  do  more  than  promise  his  help 
if  Austria  should  attack  Napoleon.3  Meanwhile  Austria  had 
steadily  continued  her  preparations,  much  hampered  and  delayed 
by  her  financial  embarrassments.  It  was  mainly  these  embarr¬ 
assments  which  had  made  it  impossible  for  Austria  to  seize  what 
was  in  some  ways  a  more  favourable  moment  for  a  rising  than 
that  which  she  actually  took,  the  moment  when  Baylen,  Cintra 
and  the  retreat  of  Joseph  to  the  Ebro  made  it  imperative  that 
Napoleon  should  forthwith  proceed  to  Spain.  At  that  time 
North  Germany  seemed  ripe  for  revolt,  and  even  Napoleon  would 
have  found  it  hard  to  direct  a  war  on  the  Danube  at  the  same 
time  that  he  was  conducting  his  great  movements  for  the  re¬ 
conquest  of  Spain.  That  this  occasion  could  not  be  used,  had 
been  partly  due  to  the  action,  or  rather  the  inaction,  of  Prussia, 
still  more  to  the  attitude  of  Alexander:  to  lay  the  blame  on 
Austria  4  is  most  unfair. 

The  bellicose  party  at  Vienna  had  hoped  not  only  for  a 
rising  in  North-West  Germany,  for  Hessians,  Hanoverians  and 

1  Cf.  Deutsche  Geschickte ,  1806-1871,  i.  p.  137.  2  Cf.  p.  523. 

3  Cf.  Rose,  ii.  179-182. 

4  Cf.  Deutsche  Geschichfe,  1806-1871,  i.  135. 


528  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1808 


Brunswickers  were  all  showing  symptoms  of  restiveness,  blit  also 
for  the  assistance  of  Prussia  where  a  strong  party  favoured  war. 
About  the  most  anxious  to  make  common  cause  with  Austria 
against  Napoleon’s  yoke  had  been  Stein  :  in  the  autumn  of  1808, 
when  a  rupture  between  France  and  Austria  seemed  imminent, 
he  had  thrown  all  his  influence  into  the  scale  on  the  side  of  an 
insurrection.  To  conciliate  the  Poles  he  would  even  have  given 
up  all  claim  on  Prussia’s  lost  Polish  provinces.  However,  Austria 
had  been  hardly  ready  for  an  immediate  breach,  and  when 
Hardenberg  despaired  of  the  chances  of  a  rising  it  was  hardly 
wonderful  that  Frederick  William  had  turned  a  deaf  ear  to 
Stein’s  advice.  The  King’s  own  leanings  were  as  usual  against 
desperate  measures.  As  always,  he  distrusted  Austria ;  and  thus, 
when  Alexander  on  his  way  to  Erfurt  had  visited  Frederick 
William  at  Konigsberg  and  sought  to  dissuade  him  from  join¬ 
ing  Austria,  the  Czar  had  found  his  cause  half  gained  already, 
and  Austria,  with  no  hope  of  Prussia’s  help  and  with  Russia 
pledged  to  keep  the  peace  of  Central  Europe,  had  been  forced  to 
wait.  Thus  Napoleon  had  time  to  overthrow  the  Spaniards  on 
the  Ebro,  to  reinstate  Joseph  at  Madrid,  and  to  return  to  Paris 
before  Austria  moved. 

In  the  meantime  Stein  had  fallen.  Frederick  William’s 
rejection  of  his  proposals  made  his  fall  inevitable.  Napoleon  had 
already  declared  against  him  by  publishing  in  the  Moniteur  of 
Sept.  8th  an  intercepted  letter  in  which  Stein’s  hostility  to  the 
Emperor  was  openly  expressed,  but  in  deference  to  Alexander 
he  did  not  at  once  press  for  dismissal.  However,  Frederick 
William,  having  decided  against  an  insurrection,  soon  made 
up  his  mind  to  part  with  Stein.  On  November  24th  the  Minister 
was  dismissed,  Dohna  becoming  Minister  of  the  Interior,  Golz 
Foreign  Minister,  von  Altenstein  Minister  of  Finance.  Almost 
the  only  opponent  of  Napoleon  left  in  office  in  Prussia  at  the 
end  of  1808  was  Scharnhorst,  who  was  at  the  head  of  the  War 
Office. 

But  though  the  most  favourable  moment  for  a  breach  with 
Napoleon  had  passed,  she  had  gone  too  far  to  draw  back, 
and  even  though  Archduke  Charles  at  the  Conference  of  Feb. 
8th,  1809,  gave  his  vote  against  war  the  majority  decided 
to  take  the  risks.  Archduke  John  was  as  keen  on  war  as 
his  brother  was  against  it.  Stadion  urged  strongly  that  the 
favourable  opportunity  should  not  be  allowed  to  slip :  he  hoped 


i8o9]  AUSTRIA’S  EFFORT  AGAINST  NAPOLEON  529 


for  much  from  a  rising  in  North  Germany,  which  could  hardly 
be  expected  unless  the  Austrians  took  the  offensive.  Metternich, 
too,  pointed  out  that  if  Austria  did  not  anticipate  Napoleon 
she  would  merely  be  leaving  him  to  choose  the  favourable 
moment  for  his  attack  ;  he  had  no  illusions  as  to  Austria’s 
attitude  and  would  not  fail  to  attack  her  when  it  suited  him ; 
Austria  must  either  strike  at  once  or  submit. 

For  the  campaign  the  Austrian  army  was  organised  in  eleven 
corps  in  all,  amounting  to  240,000  men,  with  the  Landwehr  and 
the  Hungarian  “  insurrection,”  forces  which  may  be  estimated 
at  100,000  more,  behind  the  first  line.  Two  corps,  nearly  50,000 
men,  were  told  off  as  the  Army  of  Inner  Austria  or  of  Italy  under 
Archduke  John.  Another  of  30,000  was  allotted  to  Galicia 
to  keep  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw  in  check,  the  rest  were 
given  to  Archduke  Charles  for  the  campaign  on  the  Danube. 

By  the  spring  of  1809  the  French  troops  in  Germany 
had  been  considerably  reduced,  so  that  Davout  was  only  able 
to  concentrate  a  field  force  of  some  54,000  men  at  Wurzburg. 
To  reinforce  him,  four  divisions  on  their  way  to  Spain  were 
diverted  to  the  Iller;  to  which  river  the  contingents  of  Baden 
and  Hesse  were  also  directed,  those  of  Bavaria  and  Wiirtemberg 
being  ordered  to  collect  on  the  Danube  between  Ratisbon  and 
Ulm.  These  forces  mustered  in  all  some  120,000  men,  behind 
which  large  reserves  were  rapidly  prepared.  Expecting  the 
Austrians  to  take  the  offensive,  Napoleon  first  ordered  Berthier 
to  concentrate  the  army  behind  the  Lech,  with  the  right  under 
Massena  at  Augsburg,  the  centre  at  Donauwbrth,  and  the  left 
at  Ratisbon,  but  with  detachments  stretching  as  far  as  Ingolstadt. 
Then,  as  the  Austrian  advance  was  somewhat  delayed,  he  altered 
his  plan.  Ratisbon  was  to  be  the  principal  point  of  concentra¬ 
tion,  only  a  small  force  assembling  at  Augsburg.  Berthier, 
however,  so  far  confused  the  plans  that  by  the  16th  of  April 
Davout  and  the  left  were  at  or  near  Ratisbon,  seventy-six 
miles  from  Augsburg  where  the  corps  of  Massena  and  Oudinot 
were  concentrating.  Communication  between  these  two 
wings  depended  on  the  Bavarians  under  Lefebvre,  who  had  been 
thrust  back  from  the  Isar  by  the  Austrian  advance  and  were 
retiring  towards  the  Danube  between  Kelheim  and  Neustadt, 
where  they  expected  the  support  of  Vandamme’s  Wiirtem- 
bergers.  The  position  was  one  of  considerable  peril  had  the 
Archduke  risen  to  the  opportunity. 

34 


S30  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809 

The  original  Austrian  plan  of  campaign  had  been  that  the 
main  body  should  advance  from  Bohemia  to  the  Main,  catching 
Davout  in  flank  as  it  moved,  and  driving  him  behind  the  Rhine, 
while  two  corps  were  to  co-operate  in  Bavaria  and  South 
Germany.  By  operating  in  force  on  the  Main  it  was  hoped  to 
cover  the  expected  insurrection  of  North  Germany.  This  plan 
had  its  defects  ;  but  what  was  essential  was  sufficient  rapidity  in 
its  execution  to  profit  by  the  dispersion  of  the  French  forces. 
Nothing  could  have  been  more  fatal  than  the  belated  change 
of  plan,  which  wasted  ten  invaluable  days,  threw  the  commissariat 
arrangements  into  disorder,  and  allowed  the  French  to  continue 
their  concentration  unimpeded.  The  new  scheme  threw  the 
main  body  of  the  Army  of  the  Danube  upon  Bavaria.  Six 
corps  were  to  advance  up  the  right  bank,  push  the  Bavarians 
from  the  Isar,  and  then  turning  North  to  catch  Davout  at 
Ratisbon  between  themselves  and  Bellegarde,  who  with  the 
two  remaining  corps  was  to  descend  upon  the  Upper  Palatinate 
from  Bohemia.  It  was  in  some  ways  a  better  plan,  as  it 
did  not  expose  the  main  body  to  being  cut  off  from  Vienna 
by  a  rapid  advance  of  Napoleon  down  the  Danube  to  gain 
the  interior  flank  of  the  Austrian  army  on  the  Main ;  but  its 
advantages  did  not  in  the  least  compensate  for  the  invaluable 
time  wasted  over  the  transfer  of  the  Archduke’s  main  body 
from  Pilsen  in  Bohemia,  where  it  had  concentrated,  through 
Linz  to  the  Inn. 

Not  till  April  10th  did  the  Austrians  get  started  on  this  new 
advance,  and  the  slowness  of  their  movements  wasted  even  more 
time.  It  took  them  eight  days  to  get  from  the  Inn  to  the  Isar, 
bad  weather,  bad  roads  and  bad  commissariat  arrangements 
delaying  them.  After  a  stout  resistance  the  Bavarians  were 
driven  in  on  Neustadt  and  Kelheim ;  but  the  delays  allowed 
Davout  to  concentrate  40,000  men  at  Ratisbon  by  April  19th, 
though,  had  he  made  due  haste,  Bellegarde  might  have  seized 
that  town  on  the  14th,  on  which  day  only  one  of  Davout’s 
divisions  would  have  been  there.  Moreover,  Napoleon  had 
time  to  arrive  at  Dillingen.  He  promptly  remedied  Berthier’s 
error  by  calling  Davout  up  from  Ratisbon  to  Ingolstadt  by 
Neustadt,  and  pushing  Massena  and  Oudinot  up  from  the  Lech 
to  Pfaffenhofen.  The  move  was  not  without  danger,  for  it  took 
Davout  across  the  front  of  the  enemy,  but  it  restored  touch 
between  the  dangerously  separated  French  wings. 


i8o9]  AUSTRIA’S  EFFORT  AGAINST  NAPOLEON  531 


The  Archduke's  failure  to  pierce  the  enemy’s  centre  by 
crushing  Lefebvre’s  Bavarians  on  the  Isar  had  greatly 
diminished  the  chances  of  an  Austrian  success.  His  next  move 
was  scarcely  less  unfortunate.  Had  he  even  now  fallen  with  his 
whole  force  on  Lefebvre,  he  might  have  cut  off  Davout  from 
the  Emperor,  and  been  able  to  concentrate  upon  the  French 
left  when  thus  isolated.  If  Lefebvre  and  Vandamme  had  been 
so  badly  handled  as  to  be  even  temporarily  hors  de  combat , 
Davout  would  have  been  in  great  peril,  for  Massena  and  Oudinot 
were  still  too  far  away  to  help  him.  But  the  Archduke  moved 
North  with  his  right  and  centre  upon  Ratisbon  (April  19th). 
As  this  exposed  his  communications,  he  had  to  leave  the  two 
corps  which  formed  his  left,  those  of  Hiller  and  Archduke 
Louis,  on  the  Abens  river  to  cover  the  operation.  Nor  was  this 
move  well  managed.  Had  his  force  been  properly  concentrated 
he  might  have  checked  Davout’s  move  up  stream  to  join 
Lefebvre.  As  it  was,  Hohenzollern’s  isolated  corps  (the  left 
centre)  met  Davout  near  Dinzling,  and  lost  5000  men  in  an 
attempt,  unsuccessful  because  unsupported,  to  prevent  him 
forcing  his  way  past.  Meanwhile  by  nightfall  Massdna  had 
come  up  to  Pfaffenhofen,  so  that  on  the  morning  of  the  20th 
Napoleon  was  able  to  hurl  Lefebvre,  Vandamme  and  a  new 
corps  under  Lannes  on  the  Austrian  containing  force  along  the 
Abens,  while  Davout  stood  firm  on  his  left  near  Dinzling  and 
Massena  and  Oudinot  pushed  forward  against  Landshut.  The 
result  of  a  day’s  heavy  fighting  all  along  the  Abens  was  that 
the  Austrian  left  wing,  outnumbered  and  outflanked,  had  to 
fall  back  to  the  Isar,  every  step  it  took  removing  it  farther 
from  the  Archduke’s  main  body,  which  had  wasted  the  day  in 
the  comparatively  useless  capture  of  Ratisbon.  The  campaign 
might  yet  have  been  retrieved  had  the  Archduke  fallen  on  Davout 
on  the  2 1st  while  Napoleon  was  pursuing  Hiller  and  Arch¬ 
duke  Louis  from  Landshut  to  Neumarkt ;  but  this  last  chance 
went  the  way  of  the  others,  and  Napoleon  did  not  give  him  any 
more.  Realising  that  the  Austrian  main  body  was  not  in  front 
of  him,  but  must  be  near  Ratisbon,  Napoleon  left  the  pursuit 
of  Hiller  to  Bessieres,  and  wheeling  80  battalions  and  80 
squadrons  round  to  the  left  moved  Northward.  The  Archduke 
now  moving  South  with  the  idea  of  threatening  the  French 
communications,  met  him  next  day  (April  22nd)  just  South  of 
Ratisbon  along  the  line  Abbach  -  Fckmuhl.  The  brunt  of 


532  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809 


Napoleon’s  attack  fell  on  the  corps  of  Rosenberg,  which  formed 
the  Austrian  left.  It  held  on  to  Eckmiihl  most  gallantly;  but 
the  Archduke  failed  to  support  it,  though  nearer  to  the  Danube 
his  right  was  hardly  engaged  at  all.  After  three  hours 
Rosenberg  was  forced  back  to  Eggloffsheim,  and  the  Austrians 
were  in  no  small  danger  of  being  driven  pell-mell  into  the  river. 
But  Napoleon  for  once  paid  more  attention  to  the  fatigue  of  his 
men  than  to  the  utilisation  of  his  victory,  and  his  failure  to  press 
on  allowed  the  Archduke’s  army  to  escape  to  the  North  bank 
(April  23rd),  to  unite  with  Bellegarde,  and  to  retire  safely  along 
that  side  of  the  Danube.  Hiller  meanwhile  had  turned  on  his 
pursuers  at  Eggenfelden  (April  24th),  beaten  them  and  opened 
himself  a  road  to  Dingolfing  and  Deggendorf ;  but  the  Archduke’s 
defeat  at  Eckmiihl  made  it  impossible  to  reunite  so  far  up  the 
Danube,  and  Hiller  had  therefore  to  make  for  Linz.  Taking 
the  Burghausen  road  in  preference  to  the  better  road  by 
Scharding,  he  could  not  avoid  being  overtaken ;  and  though  his 
rearguard  did  stand  at  Ebelsberg  (May  3rd)  and  sacrifice  itself 
to  let  him  escape,  he  only  managed  to  bring  16,000  men  across 
the  river  at  Mautern  (May  8th). 

Thus  the  campaign  in  Bavaria  which  had  promised  so  well 
ended  in  disaster.  It  was  not  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Austrian 
army  who  had  been  at  fault.  They  had  fought  far  better  than 
their  predecessors  in  1805,  and  had  suffered  heavier  losses  before 
giving  way.  The  failure  to  obtain  that  initial  success  which 
alone  could  have  roused  North  Germany  and  induced  Prussia  to 
reconsider  her  policy  was  partly  due  to  the  shortcomings  of  the 
Austrian  military  administration,  but  mainly  to  the  errors  of 
Archduke  Charles.  His  initial  mistake  in  changing  the  whole 
plan  had  caused  much  delay;  more  time  was  wasted  by  the 
slowness  of  the  move  from  the  Inn  to  the  Isar,  which  allowed 
Napoleon  to  arrive  before  the  errors  of  his  lieutenant  had  be¬ 
come  irreparable ;  finally,  the  failure  to  keep  the  various  Austrian 
corps  concentrated  exposed  them  to  defeats  in  detail.  The 
Archduke’s  strategy  was  certainly  open  to  criticism,  but  it  was 
his  execution  of  his  schemes  which  was  so  deplorably  weak.  It 
certainly  contrasts  most  unfavourably  with  his  1796  campaign, 
in  which  he  had  shown  a  far  truer  appreciation  of  the  importance 
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defeated  one  by  one.  As  for  lack  of  mobility,  that  was  a 
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1809 


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iSo9]  AUSTRIA’S  EFFORT  AGAINST  NAPOLEON  533 


able  to  eradicate.  And  it  was  not  only  the  Austrian  offensive 
campaign  which  thus  failed.  Germany  would  not  rise  to  aid  a 
defeated  Power,  Prussia  would  not  risk  anything  when  the 
venture  would  only  involve  her  in  Austria’s  overthrow.  Thus 
the  attempts  at  insurrection  which  had  been  made  during  these 
critical  days  remained  isolated  expressions  of  a  general  feeling, 
heroic  efforts  of  desperate  individuals  to  achieve  what  could 
only  be  accomplished  by  a  joint  effort. 

These  attempts,  however,  have  no  small  importance  as 
indications  of  the  growth  of  a  national  feeling  in  Germany. 
Though  Napoleon’s  rule  had  not  yet  begun  to  press  half  as 
heavily  on  Germany  as  it  was  to  do  before  the  Continental 
System  succumbed  to  its  own  inherent  defects,  it  had  already 
provoked  widespread  opposition.  He  had  forcibly  interfered 
in  the  affairs  of  every  portion  of  Germany ;  he  had  overthrown 
old  established  dynasties  and  replaced  them  with  his  own 
upstart  relations ;  he  had  torn  provinces  from  their  old  allegi¬ 
ance  to  transfer  them  to  foreign  rulers.  The  abortive  risings 
in  Westphalia  under  von  Dornberg,  in  the  Alt  Mark  of 
Brandenburg  under  Katt,  at  Marburg  in  Hesse,  at  Hanover,  at 
Ziegenhayn,  effected  little  but  were  eloquent  of  much.  Had 
Archduke  Charles  adopted  the  bold  policy  some  suggested 
after  Eckmiihl,  marched  into  North-West  Germany  and  raised 
it  to  fall  on  Napoleon’s  communications,  he  might  have  failed, 
he  might  not  even  have  checked  the  Emperor’s  advance  on 
Vienna,  but  it  would  hardly  have  been  because  Westphalia  and 
Hesse  preferred  their  new  masters  to  their  old.  If  the  hardships 
which  the  Napoleonic  rule  was  to  inflict  upon  Germany  had  not 
yet  begun  to  bear  so  heavily  on  every  class  of  society  that  the 
Westphalian  burghers  and  peasants  were  ready  to  rise,  universal 
sympathy  was  felt  for  the  insurgents.  No  one  but  officials  and 
soldiers  attempted  to  stop  Schill  or  Brunswick.  At  the  best,  the 
new  regime  was  tolerated  on  account  of  the  material  benefits  it 
had  brought :  it  had  not  attached  any  one  to  it  or  obtained  any 
popular  favour.1  The  exploits  of  Schill  and  Brunswick  leave 
little  doubt  as  to  the  attitude  of  the  country.  The  Westphalian 
kingdom,  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  itself,  rested  on  one 
thing  only,  on  the  continued  military  predominance  of 
Napoleon. 

Ferdinand  von  Schill,  the  colonel  of  a  Prussian  Hussar 

1  Cf.  Fisher,  pp.  249-258. 


534  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809 


regiment  quartered  at  Berlin,  had  been  privy  to  the  conspiracy 
in  Westphalia,  and  expected  to  be  denounced  when  it  failed. 
Accordingly  he  decided  to  call  his  regiment  out  on  behalf  of  the 
insurrection,  declaring  that  he  was  acting  with  the  King’s  assent 
(April  28th).  The  regiment  followed  him  readily  enough,  and 
he  was  also  joined  by  over  100  men  from  the  Berlin  garrison 
and  by  many  volunteers.  At  their  head  he  moved  by  Potsdam 
and  Wittenberg  to  Dessau.  Here  on  May  4th  he  learnt  not 
only  of  Austrian  defeats  on  the  Danube,  but  that  Dornberg’s 
rising  had  miscarried,  and  that  the  King  of  Prussia,  instead  of 
declaring  war  on  Napoleon,  had  disowned  all  connection  with 
his  own  enterprise.  lie  might  have  moved  into  Bohemia  and 
taken  service  with  Austria,  but  he  still  claimed  to  be  acting  as  a 
loyal  Prussian,  and  he  set  out  for  the  coast,  intending  to  seize 
some  port  and  hold  it  till  help  arrived.  Milhaud,  the  French 
commander  at  Magdeburg,  sent  a  column  out  to  intercept  him  ; 
but  Schill  brushed  it  aside  (May  5th),  and  made  his  way  by 
Domitz  on  the  Elbe  to  Stralsund  (May  25th).  Had  he  at  once 
taken  ship  he  and  his  men  could  have  escaped,  but  he  decided 
to  stand  an  attack — a  hopeless  enterprise,  for  the  townspeople 
though  favourable  to  him  were  not  prepared  to  emulate 
Saragossa,  and  the  fortifications  were  weak.  May  31st  saw 
6000  Danes,  Dutch  and  Holsteiners  gathered  before  Stralsund. 
Schill,  who  had  not  more  than  a  quarter  of  the  number,  was 
unable  to  prevent  them  entering  by  a  weakly  held  gate  which 
was  in  bad  repair.  Street  fighting  ended  in  the  death  of  Schill 
and  most  of  his  party.  Their  effort  had  been  premature,  but 
they  had  not  met  a  hero’s  death  in  vain.  They  set  Germany 
an  example  of  patriotism  and  self-sacrifice  which  the  rulers  of 
Prussia  might  perhaps  have  done  well  to  follow. 

One  German  ruler,  indeed,  did  profit  by  the  example. 
Frederick  William  of  Brunswick,  third  son  of  the  man  who  had 
fallen  at  Auerstadt,  had  been  given  the  Duchy  of  Oels  in  Silesia 
as  compensation  for  his  lost  ancestral  dominions.  In  February 
1809  he  had  concluded  a  treaty  with  Austria  by  which  he  under¬ 
took  to  raise  a  Free  Corps  to  assist  Austria.  With  this  corps, 
the  famous  “Black  Legion,”  1700  men  vowed  to  fight  to  the 
death  for  the  liberation  of  Germany,  aided  by  an  Austrian 
division,  he  invaded  Saxony  from  Bohemia.  At  first  he  was 
brilliantly  successful.  The  Westphalians  and  Rivaud’s  division 
of  Junot’s  corps  who  hurried  to  the  help  of  the  King  of  Saxony 


1 809]  AUSTRIA’S  EFFORT  AGAINST  NAPOLEON  535 


proved  powerless  to  prevent  the  seizure  of  Leipzig  and  Dresden. 
Junot  was  checked  at  Bamberg,  but  King  Jerome  recovered 
Dresden  (July  1st),  and  the  armistice  of  Znaym  (July  12th) 
put  an  end  to  the  operations  of  the  Austrians.  But  Brunswick 
preferred  emulating  Schill  to  a  tame  retreat  into  Bohemia  along 
with  the  Austrians.  The  Black  Legion  was  ready  to  follow  him 
on  the  daring  errand  of  a  raid  into  Brunswick  to  raise  his  father’s 
old  subjects.  On  July  24th  he  moved  from  Zwickau  by  Halle, 
and  after  a  desperate  but  victorious  encounter  with  a  Westphalian 
regiment  at  Halberstadt  reached  Brunswick  on  the  31st.  He 
was  cordially  received,  but  the  prospects  of  a  successful  rising 
were  desperate.  The  Brunswickers  had  seen  previous  efforts  at 
insurrection  suppressed.  French  troops  were  gathering  round 
him.  The  English  army  he  had  hoped  to  see  landed  in 
Hanover  had  not  appeared,  and  there  was  nothing  to  be  done 
but  for  the  Duke  and  his  Black  Legion  to  cut  their  way  through 
Rewbell’s  division  to  the  mouths  of  the  Weser,  where  friends  in 
need  in  the  shape  of  an  English  squadron  received  them.  Thus 
carried  to  Ireland  the  Black  Legion  passed  into  the  pay  of 
Great  Britain,  its  cavalry  as  the  Brunswick  Hussars,  its  infantry 
as  the  Brunswick  Oels  Light  Infantry.1 

Meanwhile  on  the  Danube  Napoleon  had  pressed  on  to 
Vienna,  Hiller’s  retreat  over  the  Danube  having  cleared  the 
path.  On  May  10th  the  French  were  before  the  walls  of  the 
Austrian  capital.  Archduke  Maximilian  offered  an  ineffectual 
resistance  for  two  days,  which  resulted  in  considerable  damage 
to  property  and  the  evacuation  of  the  city  on  the  13th. 
Napoleon  thus  for  the  second  time  found  himself  master  of 
Vienna.  His  success  in  the  principal  theatre  of  operations  had 
already  exercised  a  great  influence  on  the  course  of  events 
elsewhere.  The  Army  of  Inner  Austria  under  Archduke 
John  had  crossed  the  frontier  into  Italy  on  April  nth,  had 
turned  Eugene’s  position  on  the  Tagliamento,  brought  him  to 
action  at  Sacilio  (April  16th),  and  inflicted  a  severe  defeat  on 
him,  a  fifth  of  his  50,000  men  being  killed  or  taken.  This 

1  This  battalion  was  sent  to  Portugal  in  October  1810,  and  after  serving  for  a  time 
in  the  famous  Light  Division,  from  which  it  unfortunately  had  to  be  removed  for 
misconduct  and  a  propensity  to  desertion,  formed  part  of  the  Seventh  Division  from 
March  1 8 1 1  till  the  end  of  the  war,  being  present  at  Salamanca,  at  Vittoria,  at  the 
battles  of  the  Pyrenees,  and  at  Orthez.  The  Brunswick  Hussars  did  good  service  in 
the  Mediterranean  and  on  the  East  Coast  of  Spain,  especially  distinguishing  them¬ 
selves  in  Bentinck’s  affair  with  Suchet  near  Villafranca  in  September  1813. 


536  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809 


defeat  caused  the  French  to  evacuate  all  Istria;  and  the  Viceroy 
would  have  abandoned  the  Adige  and  fallen  back  to  Mantua 
had  not  Macdonald  induced  him  to  stand  at  Caldiero.  Two 
days’  indecisive  fighting  (April  29th  and  30th)  saw  the  French 
left  endangered  by  the  appearance  of  Chasteler’s  Austrians  at 
Rovoredo,  and  the  French  had  no  alternative  save  retreat. 

Chasteler’s  force  was  part  of  a  corps,  the  Eighth,  which  had 
been  detached  from  Carinthia  into  Tyrol  to  aid  the  peasants 
to  throw  off  the  unpopular  Bavarian  rule  which  had  been 
imposed  on  them  at  Pressburg.  The  reforms  of  Montgelas  had 
irritated  all  classes  by  necessitating  higher  taxes  ;  they  had  been 
specially  irksome  to  the  clergy  on  account  of  their  anti-clerical 
bias.  The  old  hatred  of  Bavaria,  the  old  local  feeling  and 
love  of  independence  thus  inflamed,  brought  the  peasants  in 
thousands  from  their  homes  and  drove  the  Bavarian  garrisons 
out  of  the  valleys  of  Tyrol.  On  April  12th  the  Tyrolese  re¬ 
covered  Innsbruck,  on  the  14th  a  Bavarian  column  under 
General  Brisson  pushing  through  the  Wippthal  to  Innsbruck  was 
hemmed  in  and  forced  to  capitulate.  German  Tyrol  passed 
into  Austrian  hands  in  a  very  few  days,  and  Chasteler  moving 
South  over  the  Brenner  drove  the  French  division  under 
d’Hilliers  out  of  Italian  Tyrol. 

This  favourable  situation  was  altogether  changed  by  the 
news  from  the  Danube.  Archduke  John  had  to  retreat, 
for  Marmont  was  in  Dalmatia  and  threatening  his  communi¬ 
cations.  It  was  suggested  that  the  Archduke  should  throw 
himself  into  Tyrol  and  assist  the  peasants,  with  whom  he  was 
very  popular,  to  defend  their  fortress-like  country ;  but  in 
the  end  the  Army  of  Inner  Austria  retired  over  the  Piave 
(May  8th)  and  took  post  along  the  frontier  of  Carinthia  to 
defend  the  passes  over  the  mountains.  Several  days’  sharp 
fighting,  signalised  by  some  heroic  exploits  on  the  part  of  small 
bodies  of  Austrians,  saw  the  Archduke  forced  back  into  Styria. 
He  had  to  retire  by  Klagenfurt  upon  Gratz  (May  16th  to  20th). 
This  left  the  high  road  to  Vienna  down  the  Mur  open  to  Eugene 
and  cut  off  the  Archduke  from  Tyrol.  There  the  insurgents 
had  meanwhile  been  hotly  attacked  by  Lefebvre’s  Bavarians, 
whom  Napoleon  had  detached  against  Tyrol  after  Eckmuhl. 
They  were  abandoned  by  the  majority  of  the  Austrian  regulars, 
Chasteler  moving  down  the  Drave  to  Villach  to  rejoin  the 
Archduke,  and  Lefebvre  retook  Innsbruck  on  May  19th;  but 


1809]  AUSTRIA’S  EFFORT  AGAINST  NAPOLEON  537 


the  peasantry  nevertheless  continued  with  no  small  success  their 
desperate  resistance. 

Napoleon’s  first  object  on  obtaining  possession  of  Vienna 
was  to  secure  a  passage  to  the  North  bank  of  the  Danube, 
if  possible,  before  Archduke  Charles  could  arrive  on  the 
Marchfeld.  His  first  effort  at  Nussdorf  and  Jedler-Aue 
(May  1 6th)  was  checked  by  the  arrival  of  Hiller’s  corps  from 
Korneuburg:  on  the  16th  the  Archduke’s  army  began  to  arrive; 
by  the  19th  146  squadrons  and  116  battalions,  in  all  some 
105,000  men,  were  in  position  on  the  Marchfeld.  For  effecting 
a  passage,  Napoleon  had  available  part  of  the  Guard,  Bessieres’ 
cavalry  reserve,  Oudinot’s  grenadiers,  and  the  corps  of  Lannes, 
Davout  and  Massena,  in  all  120  squadrons  and  149  battalions, 
some  115,000  men,  with  300  to  400  guns.  Vandamme’s 
Wiirtembergers  and  Bernadotte’s  corps  of  Saxons,  Nassauers 
and  other  Confederates  guarded  the  communications,  and  had 
just  repulsed  an  attempt  on  Linz  by  Kollowrat’s  Austrian 
corps  from  Bohemia  (May  17th). 

Resolved  to  bring  the  Archduke  to  action  before  he  could 
gather  reinforcements,  Napoleon  seized  the  island  of  Lobau, 
which  the  Austrians  had  neglected  to  occupy  (May  15th),  and 
threw  bridges  across  from  it  to  the  left  bank.  On  May  20th 
Massena’s  corps  began  the  passage,  and  occupied  the  villages  of 
Aspern  and  Essling,  which  provided  an  admirable  bridge-head 
for  the  protection  of  the  passage  of  the  rest  of  the  army.  But 
next  morning  (May  21st),  long  before  this  difficult  operation 
could  be  completed,  the  covering  divisions  were  furiously 
attacked  by  five  converging  Austrian  columns.  The  heaviest 
fighting  was  on  the  Austrian  right,  where  Hiller  (Vlth  corps), 
Bellegarde  (1st)  and  Hohenzollern  (Ilnd)  joined  in  attacking 
Aspern.  The  village  was  carried  by  their  first  attack  ;  but 
Massena  retook  it  and  by  supreme  efforts  held  it  against 
repeated  assaults.  Similarly  on  the  French  right  Lannes,  who 
had  followed  Massena  across,  maintained  his  hold  of  Essling. 
When  the  attention  of  the  French  was  mainly  occupied  in  the 
effort  to  hold  these  villages  at  the  ends  of  their  line,  the 
Archduke  advanced  against  their  centre,  depleted  to  reinforce 
the  wings.  To  check  him,  Bessieres’  cavalry  had  to  be  thrown 
into  line  to  connect  the  two  villages,  since  the  breakdown  of  the 
bridges  was  causing  delay  in  the  arrival  of  reinforcements. 
Bessieres  made  several  dashing  charges  on  the  Austrian 


538  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809 


infantry  opposite  him,  but  they  stood  their  ground  with  un¬ 
precedented  firmness  and  repulsed  all  his  charges.  Towards 
evening  the  Archduke  hurled  Hiller  and  Bellegarde  in  a  last 
attack  on  Aspern ;  Molitor’s  division  of  Massena  was  all  but 
destroyed,  and  the  Austrians  managed  to  obtain  possession  of 
half  the  village  before  nightfall  put  an  end  to  the  struggle. 
Next  morning  (May  22nd)  opened  with  the  expulsion  of  the 
Austrians  from  Aspern,  Massena  putting  Carra  St.  Cyr’s  fresh 
division  into  the  fight.  Davout’s  corps  was  now  (7  a.m.)  coming 
across  the  restored  bridges  into  Lobau,  and  Napoleon  prepared 
to  deal  a  great  blow  at  the  enemy’s  centre  with  Oudinot’s 
grenadiers,  Bessieres’  cavalry  and  St.  Hilaires  division  of 
Davout.  The  Austrians  resisted  desperately,  and  were  only 
being  forced  back  towards  Breitenlee  after  very  heavy  fighting, 
when  the  sudden  collapse  of  the  great  bridge  over  the  main 
stream  of  the  Danube  altered  the  complexion  of  affairs.  The 
pressure  of  the  logs  and  tree  trunks  brought  down  by  the 
rising  river  was  too  much  for  the  bridge.1  It  gave  way,  and  not 
only  cut  off  most  of  Davout’s  corps  but  also  the  sorely  needed 
reserve  of  ammunition.  Just  at  this  moment  (8  a.m.)  the 
Archduke  brought  up  his  reserve  of  grenadiers,  and  before  them 
the  French  recoiled  to  the  ridge  between  Aspern  and  Essling. 
Along  this  and  around  the  two  villages  the  fight  was  contested 
with  desperate  valour  on  both  sides.  About  3  p.m.,  after  the 
sheer  exhaustion  of  the  combatants  had  caused  a  lull  of  nearly 
two  hours  in  the  battle,  the  pressure  of  the  Austrians  on  the 
French  flanks  became  so  serious  that  the  Emperor  had  to  give 
orders  for  a  retreat.  A  Transylvanian  regiment  finally  gained 
possession  of  Aspern,  and  only  the  Young  Guard  kept 
Rosenberg  out  of  Essling,  and  covered  the  withdrawal  of  the 
exhausted  corps  of  Lannes  and  Massena  into  the  island  of 
Lobau.  Minimise  the  defeat  as  he  might,  ascribe  it  if  he  would 
to  the  breaking  of  the  bridges,  Aspern  was  a  battle  of  a  very 
different  character  from  any  Napoleon  had  yet  fought.  He  had 
not  merely,  as  at  Eylau  and  Heilsberg,  failed  to  defeat  his  enemy, 
he  had  been  forced  to  retreat  with  a  loss  of  over  30,000  against 
24,000  which  he  had  inflicted  on  the  enemy.  The  Austrians  had 
displayed  a  remarkable  resolution  and  tenacity.  Repulsed  from 
the  villages  time  after  time,  they  had  as  often  returned  to  the 

1  The  Austrians  seem  to  have  sent  heavily-laden  barges  down  the  stream  to 
increase  the  pressure  on  the  bridge. 


1809]  AUSTRIA’S  EFFORT  AGAINST  NAPOLEON  539 


attack,  until  at  last  they  had  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  the 
Grand  Army  retreat  before  them. 

But  would  Austria  be  able  to  utilise  the  advantage  she  had 
won  ?  Much  depended  on  the  action  of  Archduke  Charles, 
even  more  on  the  movements  of  the  Army  of  Inner  Austria 
under  Archduke  John.  If  it  could  prevent  the  Army  of 
Italy  and  Marmont  from  Dalmatia  from  reinforcing  Napoleon, 
Aspern  might  prove  decisive. 

But  neither  of  the  Austrian  leaders  proved  equal  to  the 
occasion.  It  would  be  unreasonable  to  expect  that  the 
exhausted  victors  of  Aspern  should  have  renewed  their  exertions 
without  some  rest,1  but  too  many  troops  had  been  left  to  cover 
Bohemia  and  menace  ineffectually  the  French  communications ; 
and  though  before  Wagram  Kollowrat  rejoined  the  main 
army,  the  failure  to  concentrate  every  available  man  at  the 
decisive  spot  was  to  cost  Austria  dear.  Chasteler’s  divisions, 
for  instance,  which  might  have  kept  Bernadotte  back  from 
Wagram  had  they  joined  the  Tyrolese,  who  fell  on  the  Bavarians 
with  renewed  vigour  in  the  week  after  Essling  and  drove  them 
in  disorder  back  into  their  own  country,  merely  wasted  their 
time  in  futile  skirmishes  round  Klagenfurt  with  Rusca’s 
Italians,  who  were  keeping  open  Macdonald’s  communications 
with  Italy.  Archduke  Ferdinand  in  Galicia  gained  some 
successes  over  Poniatowski’s  Poles,  even  forcing  them  to 
evacuate  Warsaw;  but  the  presence  of  half  his  30,000  men 
on  the  Marchfeld  might  have  turned  the  scales  on  July  6th. 
Much  in  the  same  way  the  Army  of  Inner  Austria  was 
not  turned  to  proper  account.  On  the  day  of  Aspern  Arch¬ 
duke  John  was  at  Gratz  in  Styria,  waiting  for  Jellachich’s 
division  to  come  in  from  Radstadt  on  the  Upper  Salza. 
Jellachich,  however,  a  thoroughly  incompetent  officer,  moved 
very  slowly  and  failed  to  keep  a  proper  lookout,  with  the  result 
that  he  could  not  avoid  an  action  against  Eugene  at  St.  Michael 
on  the  Mur  (May  25th),  which  resulted  in  his  total  defeat,  and 
allowed  Eugene  to  get  through  to  Bruck  and  so  establish 
communication  with  Napoleon.  This  decided  Archduke  John 

1  Thus  Oncken  ( Allgemeine  Geschichte ,  part  iv.  vol.  i.  p.  426)  is  perhaps  too 
hard  on  the  Archduke’s  inaction  after  May  22nd  :  his  troops  had  suffered  severely 
and  were  almost  as  unfit  for  action  as  the  French  ;  but  still  it  is  undeniable  that  the 
failure  of  the  Archduke  to  follow  up  his  success  showed  a  great  want  of  enterprise 
and  of  insight  into  the  situation. 


540  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809 


to  move  into  Hungary.  On  June  1st  he  reached  Kormend, 
where  his  troops  found  reinforcements  and  supplies.  Mean¬ 
while  the  Hungarian  “  insurrection  ”  was  gathering  at  Raab,  and 
on  June  7th  Archduke  John,  in  obedience  to  orders  from  his 
brother,  left  Kormend  to  join  them.  Moving  down  the  Raab  by 
Papocz  he  reached  Raab  on  June  13th;  but  he  found  the 
“  insurrection  ”  had  only  produced  20,000  raw  and  untrained 
recruits  instead  of  the  expected  40,000,  and  detachments  for 
various  purposes  had  so  weakened  his  own  force  that  he  found 
himself  much  inferior  to  the  four  divisions  which  Napoleon  had 
sent  out  against  him  under  Eugene,  and  by  which  he  was 
attacked  on  June  14th.  The  battle  of  Raab  ended  in  the  total 
defeat  of  the  Army  of  Inner  Austria.  The  horsemen  of  the 
“  insurrection  ”  on  the  Austrian  left  were  thrown  into  disorder 
by  the  French  artillery,  and  gave  way  before  Grouchy’s  cavalry ; 
their  flight  uncovered  the  infantry,  who  were  maintaining  a 
stubborn  fight  in  the  centre.  With  the  loss  of  over  7000  men 
the  Archduke  fell  back  to  Komorn.  His  force  was  to  all  intents 
no  longer  to  be  reckoned  with  :  at  any  rate,  he  could  not  hope 
to  bring  up  to  the  Marchfeld  a  reinforcement  large  enough  to 
turn  the  scale,  which  might  have  been  the  case  had  his 
movements  been  better  arranged  and  more  rapid.  He  had 
tried  to  do  too  much  at  once,  and  had  dispersed  forces  which  if 
properly  concentrated  might  have  held  Eugene  at  bay  at  the 
Semmering.  For  the  unwise  move  from  Kormend  to  Raab 
which  brought  him  within  easy  reach  of  Eugene  Archduke 
Charles  must  be  held  responsible ;  had  he  directed  his  brother 
to  move  by  Stuhlweissenberg  and  Gran,  the  move  would  have 
taken  longer,  but  would  have  probably  meant  the  arrival  of 
30,000  men  on  the  Marchfeld,  since  the  corps  on  the  Croatian 
frontier  under  Banus  Giulay  could  have  joined  him.  But 
Archduke  John  was  himself  to  blame  for  not  falling  on  the  two 
divisions  under  Macdonald  which  had  followed  him  from  Carniola 
and  had  only  regained  touch  with  Eugene  on  the  day  of  the 
battle  of  Raab.  Here  as  at  other  periods  of  the  campaign  it 
was  the  want  of  good  leadership  which  told  so  heavily  against 
the  Austrians.  The  “  insurrectionary  ”  levies  had  not  done 
much  at  Raab,  but  nothing  could  have  been  better  than  the 
conduct  of  the  disciplined  troops  of  the  Line,  and  even  of  the 
Landwehr . 

The  net  result  of  all  this  was  that  while  Napoleon,  who  did 


1809]  AUSTRIA'S  EFFORT  AGAINST  NAPOLEON  541 


realise  the  importance  of  concentrating  every  available  man  at 
the  critical  point,  was  able  to  collect  nearly  170,000  men  in  and 
near  Lobau  by  the  end  of  June,  the  Austrians  had  only  two 
men  to  his  three.  Napoleon  had  brought  up  Bernadotte’s 
Saxons  from  Linz,  replacing  them  by  a  Bavarian  division  re¬ 
called  from  Tyrol ;  the  two  corps  of  Eugene  and  Macdonald 
had  arrived  from  Italy,  and  that  of  Marmont  from  Dalmatia, 
besides  minor  reinforcements.  The  corps  of  Kollowrat  was  the 
only  real  addition  to  the  army  of  Archduke  Charles,  though 
on  July  2nd  he  did  send’ off  a  despatch  to  Archduke  John 
bidding  him  bring  up  his  corps  from  Pressburg,  where  it  then 
stood.  Received  on  the  evening  of  July  4th,  this  order  was 
too  late  to  bring  Archduke  John  up  to  the  Marchfeld  before 
5  p.m.  on  the  6th,  and  by  then  the  decisive  action  had  been 
fought  and  lost. 

The  Austrians  since  the  end  of  May  had  retained  hold  of 
Aspern  and  Essling,  and  so  strong  was  their  position  that 
Napoleon  realised  that  the  passage  to  the  left  bank  could  not 
be  effected  there.  Under  cover,  therefore,  of  a  heavy  cannonade 
and  feints  against  this  point,  the  French  made  their  way  over 
the  Lobau  branch  of  the  Danube  by  five  bridges  flung  over  it 
on  the  Eastern  side  of  the  island.  Begun  about  10  p.m.  on  July 
4th  by  Oudinot’s  corps  (formerly  that  of  Lannes,  who  had  been 
mortally  wounded  on  May  22nd),  the  movement  was  so  far  ad¬ 
vanced  by  6  a.m.  on  the  5th  that  the  corps  of  Massena  on  the 
left  then  moved  against  Gross  Enzersdorf ;  Davout  on  the  right 
attacked  Wittau,  Oudinot  formed  the  centre.  The  Austrians 
made  little  resistance,  evacuating  their  advanced  position 
(Aspern,  Essling,  Enzersdorf,  Wittau)  and  falling  back  to  the 
stronger  line  of  Neusiedel,  Baumersdorf,  Deutsch  -  Wagram, 
Gerasdorf,  Stammersdorf.  The  left  of  this  position  was  covered 
by  the  Russbach,  and  the  right  rested  on  the  Danube  at 
Jedlersdorf,  to  which  Klenau’s  corps  (late  Hiller’s)  had  retired 
from  Aspern :  its  chief  defect  was  that  its  re-entrant  angle  at 
Wagram  gave  the  French  the  interior  position,  and  the  total 
front  was  so  long  that  orders  took  nearly  four  hours  to  get 
from  flank  to  flank.  It  was  also  exposed  on  the  left,  where 
Archduke  John  was  expected;  but  he  was  still  many  hours 
away. 

The  retreat  of  the  Austrians  from  their  advanced  position 
encouraged  Napoleon  to  try  a  direct  attack  on  the  evening  of 


542  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809 


the  5th.  He  hoped  to  drive  in  their  left  from  its  position 
behind  the  Russbach  and  so  interpose  between  the  main  army 
and  the  corps  of  Archduke  John  :  he  therefore  held  the  Austrian 
centre  and  right  in  check  with  his  left,  Massena’s  (I  Vth)  corps,  and 
opposed  Bernadotte,  Eugene,  Oudinot  and  Davout  to  the  three 
corps  of  Bellegarde,  Hohenzollern  and  Rosenberg,  which  formed 
the  Austrian  left.  Bernadotte  carried  Wagram,  only  to  be  driven 
out  again,  and  as  the  corps  on  his  right  were  repulsed  from 
Baumersdorf  and  Neusiedel  the  attack  proved  an  expensive 
failure.  Encouraged  by  this,  Archduke  Charles  decided  to 
take  the  offensive  next  morning  without  waiting  for  his  brother. 
His  plan  was  for  his  right,  Klenau  and  Kollowrat,  to  push 
forward  Eastward,  threatening  to  outflank  Napoleon’s  left  and 
cut  him  off  from  Aspern ;  but  his  centre,  his  Grenadier  reserve, 
and  left  centre,  Bellegarde  and  Hohenzollern,  were  also  to 
advance  on  Aderklaa  to  keep  touch  with  the  right.  Napoleon, 
too,  intended  his  principal  effort  to  be  on  his  right :  he  meant 
to  storm  the  heights  behind  the  Russbach  and  to  pierce  the 
Austrian  centre  by  Aderklaa  and  Wagram ;  but  he  had  the 
great  advantage  of  having  his  troops  concentrated  to  meet 
badly  timed  converging  attacks.  For  the  Austrian  left  moved 
too  soon  and  had  already  been  repulsed  from  Glinzendorf  by 
Davout,  when  at  length  Klenau  fell  on  Massena  as  the  latter 
came  up  from  Breitenlee  to  support  Bernadotte.  The  leading 
division  of  the  IVth  Corps,  Carra  St.  Cyr’s,  was  repulsed  from 
Aderklaa,  its  rear,  Boudet,  was  driven  in  on  Aspern.  In  vain 
Massena  tried  to  make  head  against  the  Austrians  with  Legrand 
and  Molitor :  he  was  pressed  back  in  some  disorder,  Kollowrat 
moving  forward  on  Klenau’s  left  caught  Bernadotte  in  flank, 
while  d’i\spre’s  Grenadier  reserve  and  Bellegarde  advanc¬ 
ing  from  Wagram  on  Aderklaa  assailed  him  in  front.  By 
10  a.m.  the  French  left  and  left  centre  were  in  retreat,  and 
the  battle  seemed  in  a  fair  way  to  be  lost.  But  Napoleon 
never  rose  higher  than  at  so  critical  a  moment.  He  saw  that 
a  successful  blow  at  the  Austrian  centre  would  paralyse  the 
advance  of  their  right  by  cutting  it  off  from  their  left,  and 
while  he  checked  Klenau  and  Kollowrat  with  such  cavalry  and 
artillery  as  he  had  at  hand,  he  collected  a  great  body  of  infantry 
for  the  deciding  stroke.  Soon  after  midday  he  launched  this 
column  against  Aderklaa.  It  was  headed  by  Macdonald’s  corps 
and  followed  by  a  Bavarian  division  of  Lefebvre’s  with  cavalry 


1 809]  AUSTRIA’S  EFFORT  AGAINST  NAPOLEON  543 


on  its  wings.  Simultaneously  Eugene  renewed  the  attack  on 
Wagram,  Oudinot  pushed  forward  against  Hohenzollern’s  front, 
Davout,  with  Montbrun’s  cavalry  covering  his  flank,  made  a 
turning  movement  by  Neusiedel,  driving  Rosenberg  in  before 
him. 

But  it  was  in  the  centre  that  the  battle  was  decided.  The 
way  had  been  prepared  for  Macdonald  by  the  great  battery 
Napoleon  had  collected,  and  the  Army  of  Italy,  though  suffering 
heavy  losses,  did  pierce  the  Austrian  centre  and  drive  it  in 
on  Gerasdorf.  The  simultaneous  success  of  Eugene  against 
Wagram  and  of  Oudinot  and  Davout  farther  to  the  right, 
clinched  this  advantage.  In  good  order  the  Austrians  drew  off  all 
along  the  line.  They  maintained  a  front  firm  enough  to  secure 
them  against  pursuit ;  indeed,  the  French  were  too  exhausted 
to  press  on,  and  the  arrival  of  Archduke  John’s  belated  corps 
at  Ober-Siebenbriinn  far  to  the  Eastward  spread  a  panic  through 
the  French  ranks  which  showed  what  his  appearance  earlier 
might  have  effected.  As  far  as  losses  went,  the  honours  of  the 
day  were  evenly  divided.  If  the  Austrians  left  8500  prisoners 
behind  them,  besides  25,000  killed  and  wounded,  they  had  in¬ 
flicted  a  loss  of  30,000  on  the  French,  and  could  point  to  1  r  guns 
and  12  eagles  as  trophies  against  the  9  guns  and  1  colour  of 
which  the  French  could  boast.  Had  their  wings  only  combined 
their  movements  better,  had  Archduke  John  and  his  15,000  men 
been  in  time  to  take  up  their  appointed  place  and  cover  the 
exposed  Austrian  left,  had  he  played  Bliicher  to  his  brother’s 
Wellington,  Wagram  might  have  been  an  enlarged  edition  of 
Aspern,  or  might  have  anticipated  Waterloo. 

But  Napoleon’s  downfall  was  not  to  be  achieved  by  Austria 
alone.  The  Archduke  who  had  fallen  back  on  Znaym,  where 
he  concentrated  60,000  men  by  July  10th,  was  anxious  for  an 
armistice.  Napoleon  had  had  too  strong  a  taste  of  the  chances 
of  defeat  to  refuse  his  overtures.  After  an  indecisive  action  on 
the  nth,  in  which  Marmont  and  Massena  failed  to  dislodge 
Bellegarde  from  his  position  at  Znaym,  an  armistice  was 
arranged.  The  military  situation  hardly  made  this  necessary. 
Archduke  John  might  have  got  together  30,000  to  40,000  regulars 
and  as  many  Hungarian  levies  for  a  diversion  South  of  the  Danube, 
and  there  was  still  a  chance  that  Prussia  might  take  up  arms, 
or  England  make  an  effective  if  belated  diversion  in  North 
Germany.  However,  the  opponents  of  Stadion  had  gained 


544  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809 


influence,  Wagram  had  converted  the  opportunist  Metternich 
into  an  advocate  of  peace,  and  the  resignation  of  Archduke 
Charles  (July  23rd)  rather  than  dismiss  his  adjutant  Count 
Griinne  was  a  blow  to  the  war  party.  With  him  the  Arch¬ 
dukes  John  and  Joseph  threw  up  their  commands,  while 
Metternich  replaced  Stadion  as  Foreign  Minister.1  Count 
Lichtenstein,  who  became  Commander-in-Chief,  was  the  leader 
of  those  who  desired  peace ;  and  as  Russia  remained  obstinately 
neutral  and  Prussia  refused  to  rise  unless  Austria  would 
denounce  the  armistice,  which  Austria  declined  to  do  unless 
Prussia  would  first  take  up  arms,  even  the  bellicose  gradually 
abandoned  hope.  England,  too,  by  sending  her  great  expedi¬ 
tion  not  to  the  Weser  but  to  the  Scheldt,  destroyed  all  lingering 
chance  of  an  insurrection  in  North  Germany.  The  troops  who 
perished  of  fever  in  the  Walcheren  marshes  ought  to  have  been 
landed  in  Hanover  in  June — the  Hanoverian  population  had 
welcomed  Cathcart  in  1805  2  and  four  years  of  Napoleon’s  rule 
had  not  increased  its  popularity,  —  but  the  quarrel  in  the 
ministry  between  Castlereagh  and  Canning  was  largely  re¬ 
sponsible  for  the  delays  through  which  the  splendid  opportunity 
was  allowed  to  slip  away ;  when  it  finally  sailed,  there  was 
perhaps  as  much  to  be  gained  by  a  blow  at  Antwerp  as  by 
landing  in  North  Germany  after  the  best  chance  was  past.  The 
failure  of  the  expedition  was  due  not  so  much  to  its  destination, 
as  to  the  feeble  execution  of  the  scheme,  for  which  Lord 
Chatham  must  be  held  responsible. 

The  final  blow  came  when  Prussia  declined  to  stir  unless  she 
were  put  on  exactly  the  same  footing  in  Germany  as  Austria. 
Rather  than  this  Francis  preferred  peace  with  Napoleon,  and 
Lichtenstein  was  despatched  to  negotiate  a  treaty  in  personal 
communication  with  the  Emperor.  The  terms  were  harsh,  but 
Napoleon  was  in  a  position  to  dictate.  Austria  ceded  to  France 
Trieste,  Carniola,  Istria,  Fiume,  Monfalcone,  Dalmatia,  the  circle 
of  Villach  in  Carinthia,  and  all  her  possessions  on  the  right  of 
the  Save  down  to  the  Bosnian  frontier.  She  abandoned  all 
claims  on  Salzburg,  Berchtesgaben  and  the  Innviertel,  which 
Napoleon  handed  over  to  his  Bavarian  client.  Another  vassal 
state,  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw,  was  enlarged  by  West 

1  Stadion  offered  his  resignation  July  8th,  but  Metternich  did  not  finally  take  over 
the  position  from  him  till  October. 

2  War  Office  Original  Correspondence ,  vol.  lxviii. ,  Hanover. 


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1 809]  AUSTRIA’S  EFFORT  AGAINST  NAPOLEON  545 


Galicia  and  Cracow,  Austria’s  share  in  the  1795  partition,  while 
Russia  received  the  South-Eastern  corner  of  Old  Galicia. 
Austria  had,  moreover,  to  acquiesce  in  the  abolition  of  the 
Teutonic  Order,  to  accept  the  Continental  System,  to  limit 
her  army  to  150,000  men,  and  pay  an  indemnity  of  85,000,000 
francs.  Her  loss  of  inhabitants  was  3,500,000,  of  territory  over 
40,000  square  miles.  The  Treaty  of  Schonbrunn  (Oct.  14th) 
thus  marked  the  lowest  point  to  which  the  power  of  the 
Hapsburgs  had  yet  sunk.  Cut  off  from  the  sea,  compelled  to 
submit  to  Napoleon  almost  as  completely  as  must  Baden  or 
Lippe-Detmold,  Austria  had  the  added  mortification  of  having 
to  abandon  the  gallant  Tyrolese.  Even  after  Wagram  and 
Znaym  they  had  continued  their  heroic  but  hopeless  resistance, 
and  had  again  repulsed  the  Bavarians  when  they  for  the  third 
time  advanced  against  them  (August).  The  conclusion  of  peace 
allowed  large  forces  to  be  directed  against  the  mountaineers, 
up  the  Inn,  up  the  Salza,  and  from  Italy.  Still  the  Tyrolese 
refused  to  submit.  But  this  time  numbers  were  too  much  even 
for  them.  By  the  end  of  December  all  was  over  except  the 
executions.  The  gallant  Hofer  met  his  fate  in  February  1810, 
and  with  him  ends  one  of  the  most  romantic  incidents  in  all 
German  history.  South  Tyrol  now  went  to  the  Kingdom  of 
Italy,  part  of  Eastern  Tyrol  to  the  Illyrian  provinces,  the  rest 
to  the  detested  Bavarians. 

Moreover,  Stadion’s  resignation  marked  the  abandonment  of 
Austria’s  effort  at  a  truly  patriotic  policy.  Stadion  had  made 
her  the  champion  of  German  nationality,  but  the  effort  had  been 
premature.  Her  defeat  had  been  in  no  small  measure  due  to 
the  inaction  of  some  German  states  and  to  the  active  hostility 
of  others,  those  members  of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine 
whom  gratitude  to  Napoleon  or  a  sense  that  their  gains  and 
new  titles  would  not  survive  the  overthrow  of  their  author  made 
faithful  to  his  cause,  since  as  yet  he  had  not  sacrificed  their 
material  prosperity  to  his  hatred  of  England.  With  Stadion’s 
fall  disappeared  the  popular  policy  he  had  advocated.  Austria 
under  Metternich  was  once  again  subject  to  the  suspicion-ridden 
system  of  Thugut  and  Cobenzl.  Had  she  won  in  1809  under 
the  leadership  of  Stadion  and  Archduke  Charles,  Austria 
could  hardly  have  gone  back  from  the  principles  they  had 
enunciated,  could  hardly  have  abandoned  their  more  Liberal 
policy  to  become  the  chief  stronghold  of  reaction.  The  failure 
35 


546  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809 


of  1809  was  therefore  of  momentous  importance  to  her  future. 
But  if  one  of  its  lessons  may  have  been  that  Austria  should 
have  put  all  other  considerations  aside  to  assist  Russia  and 
Prussia  in  1807,  the  conduct  of  Prussia  in  1799  and  1805  was 
even  more  responsible  for  Germany’s  humiliation  and  Napoleon’s 
triumph. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 


GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON’S  MERCY 

IT  would  be  one  of  the  gravest  errors  to  regard  Austria’s 
failure  to  overthrow  Napoleon  as  having  merely  postponed 
the  day  of  reckoning  and  involved  a  change  in  the  conditions 
under  which  it  was  to  come  about.  If  one  reads  the  story 
of  1809  in  the  light  of  1813,  if  one  looks  back  on  Wagram 
through  Waterloo,  Leipzig,  Vittoria  and  the  Beresina,  one  is  in 
danger  of  misreading  it.  The  lesson  of  1809  is  that  Germany 
had  not  yet  been  welded  into  one  by  Napoleon’s  oppression  ; 
indeed,  Austria  owed  her  defeat  in  no  small  measure  to  the 
assistance  given  to  Napoleon  by  his  German  vassals,  and  to  the 
apathy  or  selfishness  or  timidity  of  Prussia  and  the  other  states 
to  whom  she  had  looked  for  support.  To  the  South-West 
of  Germany  Napoleon  was  still  a  benefactor  rather  than  an 
oppressor,  the  protector  of  Bavarian  and  Franconian  against 
the  Hapsburg  and  the  Hohenzollern,  the  author  of  manifold 
ameliorations  in  the  social  and  material  circumstances  of  the 
mass  of  the  population ;  while  even  in  the  North-West,  in 
Westphalia  and  in  the  Hanoverian  districts  still  under  mili¬ 
tary  rule,  his  yoke  was  not  yet  so  galling  that  those  who  bore 
it  were  ready  to  risk  all  in  the  attempt  to  throw  it  off.  It  was 
in  the  years  between  Wagram  and  the  retreat  from  Moscow 
that  the  attitude  of  the  people  of  Germany  towards  Napoleon 
finally  crystallised  into  one  of  uncompromising  hostility, 
precisely  because  it  was  in  these  years  that  the  pressure  of  the 
Continental  System  on  every  German  household  brought  home 
to  Hessians,  to  Brunswickers,  to  Saxons,  to  burghers  of  the 
Hanseatic  towns,  of  Rhenish  cities  like  Diisseldorf,  and  of 
Baltic  ports  like  Dantzic,  the  fact  that  the  new  Charlemagne 
was  prepared  to  sacrifice  their  interests  and  their  welfare  to  his 
struggle  with  the  Mistress  of  the  Seas.  The  enforcing  of  the 
Continental  System,  Napoleon’s  great  weapon  against  Great 

Britain,  was  at  the  root  of  his  aggressions  on  Germany,  of 

547 


548  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809- 


the  arbitrary  territorial  alterations  which  gave  offence  to  the 
Princes,  of  the  financial  extortions  and  the  interference  with 
trade  and  industry  which  inflicted  such  widespread  suffering  on 
the  peoples,  of  the  Spanish  and  Russian  campaigns  for  which  the 
conscription  took  its  toll  not  from  French  families  only,  but  from 
Dutch,  German  and  Italian  homes  ;  finally,  his  failure  to  enforce 
this  system  on  Russia  and  on  Spain  brought  about  that  military 
situation  which  made  the  successful  rising  of  1813  possible. 

But  in  1809  these  things  were  still  in  the  future.  If  the 
modern  investigator  can  see  clearly  in  the  Franco-Russian 
alliance  the  signs  of  its  coming  dissolution,  they  were  not  quite 
so  obvious  when  it  had  just  sufficed  to  keep  Russia’s  neutrality 
proof  against  the  temptation  of  Aspern.  With  Austria  humbled, 
Prussia’s  helplessness  proclaimed  by  her  inaction,  North-West 
Germany  occupied  by  his  troops  or  carved  up  into  new 
principalities  of  his  own  creation,  and  the  states  of  South-West 
Germany  his  faithful  allies,  Napoleon  might  reasonably  feel 
satisfied  with  the  state  of  affairs  in  Germany.  If  he  could  have 
induced  England  to  make  peace  on  terms  which  acknowledged 
his  territorial  resettlement  of  Europe,  it  is  more  than  possible 
that  his  organisation  might  have  endured,  at  least  that  it  might 
have  lasted  his  lifetime.  But  to  overcome  England  he  was 
driven  into  courses  which  deprived  him  of  the  benefit  of  much 
of  what  he  had  done  for  Germany.  The  destroyer  of  the  ancien 
regime ,  of  social  and  economic  privilege,  became  lost  in  the  author 
of  the  Continental  System,  and  in  the  master  whose  servants  the 
conscribing  officials  were.  Gratitude  was  before  long  forgotten, 
and  submerged  by  hatred. 

Yet,  as  1813  was  to  prove,  the  intensity  of  the  hostility 
to  Napoleon  varied  enormously  in  different  states.  It 
was  strongest  in  Prussia,  which  had  only  received  insult 
and  injury  at  his  hands,  since  the  remodelling  of  the  insti¬ 
tutions  of  the  country  on  the  lines  he  had  laid  down  else¬ 
where,  the  benefits  of  the  abolition  of  feudalism  and  privilege, 
came  not  from  him,  but  from  the  Hohenzollern  and  their 
ministers.  It  was  weaker  in  the  North-West,  which  suffered 
greatly  from  the  Continental  System,  which  had  been  bandied 
about  from  one  of  his  puppets  to  another,  but  which  had 
still  received  from  him  and  his  nominees  the  benefits  of  an 
orderly,  systematic  and  modern  rule.  It  was  weakest  in  the 
South-West,  where  states  like  Bavaria  and  Wiirtemberg  repre- 


1812]  GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON’S  MERCY 


549 


sented  the  realisation  by  his  help  of  traditional  ideas,  were 
developments,  not  new  creations,  and  possessed  some  other 
justification  for  their  existence  than  the  mere  fiat  of  the 
conqueror.  They,  too,  were  sacrificed  to  the  Continental 
System,  their  contingents  perished  for  the  Emperor  in  Russia 
and  in  Spain ;  but  they  owed  Napoleon  no  small  debt,  and  it 
was  only  when  the  Allies  guaranteed  them  the  continued  enjoy¬ 
ment  of  the  boons  he  had  conferred  on  them  that  their 
German  patriotism  overpowered  Napoleon’s  hold  on  their 
allegiance. 

Among  these  states,  Bavaria  owed  as  much  to  Napoleon 
as  did  any  other.  She  had  resumed  the  position  she  had  held 
in  Louis  xiv’s  time  of  the  principal  client  state  of  France. 
This  had  caused  her  a  great  increase  of  territory,  the  annexations 
of  1809  bringing  her  area  up  to  nearly  40,000  square  miles,  and 
her  population  to  over  3,000,000.  But  her  territorial  develop¬ 
ment  was  of  less  importance  than  the  work  of  Maximilian  Joseph 
and  Montgelas  in  building  up  a  well-organised,  strongly  central¬ 
ised  modern  state.  More  fortunate  than  his  Austrian  namesake, 
Joseph  II,  the  King  of  Bavaria  was  able  to  utilise  the  ideas  and 
methods  of  the  French  Revolution  to  carry  out  a  revolution 
from  above  for  which  his  subjects  were  by  no  means  prepared. 
The  Liberal  principles  of  the  King  and  his  minister  were  not 
altogether  popular,  especially  with  the  Catholic  inhabitants  of 
the  numerous  small  towns  and  with  the  Tyrolese  peasantry,  who 
bitterly  resented  the  interference  with  their  religious  rites  and 
customs,  the  dissolution  of  their  Estates,  and  the  confiscation 
of  Church  property.  Outside  Tyrol,  however,  a  Bavarian 
nationality  was  really  created.  The  old  constitution  was  swept 
away,  and  a  new  order  established  in  its  place  (May  1808). 
The  nobles,  while  retaining  their  social  privileges,  were  com¬ 
pelled  to  pay  taxes  ;  personal  freedom  was  guaranteed  to  all 
persons  and  classes.  That  an  army  based  on  conscription 
was  among  the  innovations,  that  the  Code  Napoleon  was  intro¬ 
duced,  the  administration  organised  on  French  lines,  and  that 
the  country  was  divided  after  the  French  model  into  fifteen 
departments  1  named  after  the  rivers,  need  hardly  be  mentioned. 
The  government  may  be  best  described  as  a  Liberal  bureaucratic 
absolutism,  for  the  representative  element  in  the  constitution  was 
so  small  and  unimportant  as  to  be  practically  negligible.  The 

1  Tyrol  provided  three  of  these. 


550  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809- 


chief  difficulty  was  financial :  Napoleon’s  demands  on  his  allies 
were  not  easily  appeased,  nor  could  a  modern  administration  be 
provided  without  considerable  outlay :  moreover,  Maximilian 
Joseph  was  not  less  extravagant  than  the  majority  of  his  family, 
if  he  never  imitated  the  wilder  performances  of  some  of  the 
later  Wittelsbachs.1 

In  Baden  a  very  similar  state  of  things  prevailed,  though  on 
a  somewhat  smaller  scale.  Duke  Charles  Frederick  deserves 
credit  for  having  endeavoured  to  spare  his  subjects  as  far 
as  possible  from  the  burden  of  the  expense  of  the  increased 
military  establishment.  To  this  end  he  effected  great  economies 
at  his  Court,  while  endeavouring  to  bring  the  financial  system 
into  line  with  modern  requirements.  Here  also  one  meets  an 
administration  organised  on  the  French  pattern  :  a  Council  with 
the  five  departments  of  Finance,  Justice,  the  Interior,  War, 
and  Foreign  Affairs  subordinated  to  it ;  a  Legislative  Council  of 
ministers  and  nominees  ;  an  enlightened  autocracy  governing 
in  the  interests  of  subjects  who  were  hardly  allowed  any  voice 
in  the  settlement  of  their  affairs. 

Frederick  of  Wiirtemberg  presents  a  rather  different  aspect. 
If  Wiirtemberg  had  retained  more  of  its  mediaeval  constitution 
longer  than  its  neighbours,  the  change  it  now  underwent  was 
the  more  complete.  An  oppressive  absolutism  was  substituted 
for  “  das  gute  alte  Recht”  the  nobles  found  themselves  power¬ 
less  to  resist  the  loss  of  most  of  their  cherished  privileges,  and 
all  classes  were  equally  compelled  to  submit  to  the  interference 
of  the  monarch  in  every  sphere  of  activity.  Napoleon  secured 
the  allegiance  of  his  German  clients  by  consulting  the  interests 
of  the  sovereigns,  not  those  of  the  subjects,  and  the  destruction 
of  the  old  liberties  of  Wiirtemberg  was  typical  of  the  removal  of 
all  such  obstacles  which  marred  the  completeness  of  his  vassal 
monarchs’  control  of  their  principalities,  since  the  more 
absolute  the  vassal,  the  more  completely  could  the  overlord 
dispose  of  the  resources  of  the  subject  states.  Local  liberties 
were  a  hindrance,  and  must  therefore  be  swept  away.  But 
with  the  Napoleonic  absolutism  Wiirtemberg  received  the  Code 
Napoleon  and  the  abolition  of  many  of  the  cramping  relics  of 
feudalism  which  had  so  much  impeded  the  social  and  economic 
development  of  the  country.  Frederick  has  been  described  as 
“  an  inconsiderate  despotwho  oppressed  the  noble  Swabian  people 

1  Cf.  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1806-187 1 ,  vol.  i.  pp.  94  ff. 


1 3 1 2 ]  GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON’S  MERCY 


55i 


with  disgraceful  disregard”;1  but  for  all  that  he  was  the  real 
creator  of  the  Kingdom  of  Wurtemberg ;  he  brought  the  country 
safely  through  the  perils  of  the  Napoleonic  era,  and  out  of  “a 
collection  of  odds  and  ends”  built  up  a  compact  and  well-organ¬ 
ised  monarchy  with  an  efficient  army  which,  if  out  of  all  propor¬ 
tion  to  the  size  of  the  kingdom,  was  yet  the  best  guarantee  that 
it  should  be  respected  by  its  neighbours.  Himself  a  Protestant, 
Frederick  was  the  first  sovereign  of  Wurtemberg  to  secure  for 
Roman  Catholics  the  toleration  hitherto  denied  to  them  by  the 
bigotry  of  the  Lutheran  clergy,  who  had  in  past  time  carried 
their  intolerance  to  the  point  of  refusing  to  receive  the 
Huguenot  refugees  because  they  were  Calvinists.2 

Saxony  resembled  the  states  of  the  South-West,  inasmuch 
as  it  also  had  an  old  dynasty  which  Napoleon  had  bound  to  his 
cause  by  favours  and  concessions  instead  of  deposing  it :  it 
differed  from  them,  however,  in  being  but  little  affected  by  the 
reforming  movement  which  was  making  itself  so  strongly  felt 
elsewhere.  Very  conservative  himself,  Frederick  Augustus  was 
supported  in  his  opposition  to  reform  by  his  ministers,  Marcolini 
and  Hopfzarten,  who  would  not  hear  of  any  changes  in  the 
internal  administration,  cumbrous  and  unworkable  though  it 
was,  and  did  not  even  attempt  to  tax  the  nobles.  Not  till  1811 
did  the  increased  expense  of  a  larger  army  necessitate  some 
readjustment  of  the  system  of  taxation.  Saxony  thus  was  less 
affected  by  the  changes  of  the  time  than  any  other  part  of 
Germany,  though  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw  which  had  been 
placed  under  her  King  by  the  Peace  of  Tilsit  was  organised  on 
the  usual  French  lines,  with  six  departments,  a  two-chamber 
Assembly  whose  functions  were  practically  nominal,  and  a 
Council  of  five  to  whom  the  government  was  entrusted.  Baron 
Senfft,  the  Saxon  Foreign  Minister,  would  have  gladly  made 
the  union  between  Saxony  and  Poland  closer,  hoping  to  crush 
Prussia  between  them,  but  this  was  not  what  Napoleon  seems 
to  have  intended.  The  hold  of  the  King  of  Saxony  on  the 
Grand  Duchy  was  little  more  than  a  convenient  cloak  for 
French  predominance  in  its  affairs,  under  which  the  Poles 
might  hope  for  a  more  complete  restoration  than  it  had  as 
yet  been  convenient  for  Napoleon  to  give  them.  The  connection 
with  Saxony  remained  therefore  little  more  than  nominal. 

1  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1806-1871 ,  i.  435* 

2  Cf.  A.  Pfxster,  Konig  Friedrich  von  Wurtemberg  und  seine  Zcit. 


552  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809- 


In  the  North-West  of  Germany  some  of  the  old  dynasties 
remained,  in  Mecklenburg  and  in  Oldenburg  and  in  Hesse- 
Darmstadt,  where  Landgrave  Louis  X,  now  Grand  Duke,  was 
so  wedged  in  between  two  of  Napoleon’s  new  creations  as  to 
be  powerless  for  harm  even  if  he  had  been  hostile  to  Napoleon, 
and  not,  as  he  was,  one  of  the  Emperor’s  most  faithful 
adherents.  Of  the  new  states,  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Wurzburg, 
given  (1806)  in  exchange  for  Salzburg  to  Archduke  Ferdinand, 
who  had  then  for  the  second  time  been  dispossessed,  needs  but 
a  brief  mention.  Admitted  to  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine 
in  September  1806,  he  had  had  to  send  his  contingent  of  2000 
men  to  support  Napoleon  in  1809,  but  the  improved  relations 
between  France  and  Austria  inaugurated  by  Metternich  and 
crowned  by  the  marriage  of  Marie  Louise  to  Napoleon  (April 
1810),  removed  all  danger  of  a  collision  of  interests. 

The  Grand  Duchy  of  Frankfort,  the  principality  with  which 
the  unstable  Dalberg  was  now  invested,  is  a  more  interesting 
study.  Originally  given  the  Free  Cities  of  Frankfort  and 
Ratisbon  with  the  Principality  of  Aschaffenburg,  Dalberg  had 
had  after  Wagram  to  agree  (Feb.  16th,  1810)  to  a  modification 
which  gave  Ratisbon  to  Bavaria  and  compensated  him  with 
Hanau  and  Fulda.  His  dominions  thus  formed  a  curiously 
shaped  strip  some  2200  square  miles  in  extent,  all  but  a  very 
small  portion  being  situated  on  the  North  bank  of  the  Main. 
A  population  of  some  300,000,  marked  by  many  diversities 
of  race,  occupation  and  religion,  was  given  some  measure  of 
unity  by  having  to  submit  to  the  same  laws  and  the  same 
administrative  system,  both  borrowed  from  France,  and  to 
provide  a  contingent  of  4200  to  the  Confederation’s  army.  The 
abolition  of  the  different  local  and  municipal  institutions  and 
the  establishment  of  legal  and  fiscal  unity  were  but  a  poor 
compensation  for  the  heavy  taxation,  the  loss  of  trade  with 
England,  the  confiscation  and  destruction  of  colonial  goods 
which  had  been  imported  through  that  country.  Education 
was,  it  is  true,  encouraged,  the  administration  of  justice 
enormously  improved,  the  position  of  the  Jews  in  some  degree 
ameliorated,  the  substitution  of  the  French  Penal  Code  for  the 
Carolina ,  a  penal  law  so  barbarous  as  to  be  practically  obsolete, 
was  a  great  advantage ;  but  against  that  the  trade  of  Frankfort 
was  practically  ruined,  and  large  numbers  of  the  men  of  the 
Duchy  met  their  death  in  the  service  of  the  Emperor  for  a 


1 8 1 2 ]  GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON’S  MERCY 


553 


cause  which  could  not  benefit  them  or  their  countrymen.1 
Had  Napoleon  maintained  his  supremacy,  the  Duchy  was  to 
have  passed  to  Eugene  Beauharnais  on  Dalberg’s  death  ;  but 
its  existence  was  anomalous  and  unjustifiable,  a  violation  of 
history  and  geography  alike,  and  it  did  not  survive  the  fall 
of  its  founder.2 

A  rather  larger  state,  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Berg,3  was  formed 
with  part  of  the  much-disputed  Cleves-Jlilich  inheritance  as 
its  nucleus.  Cleves,  which  had  gone  to  Prussia,  and  Berg,  which 
had  passed  through  the  Neuburg  Wittelsbachs  into  the  hands 
of  Maximilian  Joseph  of  Zweibriicken  and  Bavaria,  thus  came 
together  again  under  the  rule  of  Murat.4  Murat  received  a 
seat  in  the  College  of  Kings,  and  on  the  formation  of  the 
Confederation  of  the  Rhine  the  possessions  of  William  Frederick 
of  Nassau,  the  ex-Stadtholder  of  the  United  Provinces,5  were 
added  to  the  Grand  Duchy  on  the  refusal  of  their  ruler  to  join 
the  Confederacy  ;  while  the  overthrow  of  Prussia  led  to  its  being 
further  increased  by  receiving  Mark,  also  part  of  the  Cleves- 
Jlilich  inheritance,  Tecklenberg,  Lingen  and  the  Prussian 
portion  of  Munster — an  addition  of  3200  square  miles  and 
360,000  people.6  The  Grand  Duchy  thus  included  the  valleys 
of  the  Sieg,  Ruhr  and  Lippe,  all  tributaries  of  the  Rhine, 
and  the  upper  waters  of  the  Ems,  covering  in  all  some  12,000 
square  miles,  with  a  population  of  1,200,000,  and  including 
some  of  the  chief  manufacturing  towns  of  Germany.  “  It  was 
the  Birmingham  and  Sheffield,  the  Leeds  and  Manchester 
of  Germany  rolled  into  one  ” 7  inasmuch  as  iron  and  steel 
works,  textile  manufactures,  the  cloth,  the  cotton,  the  silk  and 
the  wool  industries  flourished  side  by  side.  But  its  prosperity 
depended  on  the  ready  importation  of  raw  material  and  on 
finding  a  market  for  its  finished  products,  so  the  continental 
blockade  and  the  rigid  protective  system  of  France  caught 

1  A  battalion  from  Frankfort  was  in  Leval’s  German  division  of  the  Second  Corps 
which  entered  Spain  in  the  autumn  of  1808;  it  was  badly  mauled  at  Talavera,  and 
was  one  of  the  corps  which  came  over  to  the  British  during  the  fighting  round 
Bayonne  in  December  1813. 

-  Fisher,  ch.  xiv.,  gives  a  most  interesting  account  of  the  Grand  Duchy  of 
F  rankfort. 

3  Cf.  Fisher,  chs.  ix.  and  x.  4  March  1806. 

5  Cf.  p.  372. 

G  At  this  time  the  fortress  of  Wesel,  hitherto  part  of  the  Grand  Duchy,  was  handed 
over  to  France. 

7  Fisher,  p.  206. 


554  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809- 


the  Grand  Duchy  between  the  upper  and  the  nether  millstones. 
By  1812  its  exports  had  declined  to  a  fifth  of  what  they  had 
been  in  1807,  since  its  markets  across  the  ocean  had  been  lost 
to  it  by  British  commercial  and  maritime  supremacy,  and  the 
French  Empire  was  surrounded  with  an  insurmountably  high 
tariff-wall.  The  Grand  Duchy  was  so  far  advanced  on  the 
road  to  commercial  ruin  that  in  1811  a  deputation  was 
actually  sent  to  Paris  to  petition  for  incorporation  in  the 
French  Empire. 

Thus  here  again  the  Continental  System  uprooted  any 
gratitude  which  the  reforms  introduced  by  the  French  might 
have  earned.  But  this  was  not  all.  Instead  of  the  light 
taxation  which  had  been  the  rule  before  the  creation  of  the 
Grand  Duchy,  its  inhabitants  found  themselves  borne  down 
by  a  heavy  burden.  It  was  not  merely  the  introduction  of 
the  French  fiscal  system  ;  that  might  have  been  expected  to 
increase  the  revenue  somewhat  without  really  increasing  its 
burdensomeness.  But  instead  of  the  3,000,000  francs  which  the 
Grand  Duchy  might  have  provided  with  ease,  in  1813  no  less 
a  sum  than  10,000,000  was  extorted  from  its  taxpayers.  And 
it  is  easy  to  appreciate  where  all  the  money  went  and  how 
much  benefit  its  unfortunate  inhabitants  derived  from  their 
exertions,  when  one  sees  that  between  4  and  5  millions 
were  annually  devoted  to  the  army,  when  one  meets  with  four 
battalions  from  Berg  fighting  Napoleon’s  battles  in  Catalonia, 
and  reads  of  the  6000  men  with  the  Grand  Army  of  1812  and 
of  the  4000  recruits  demanded  from  her  to  fill  the  gaps  which 
the  Russian  disaster  had  made. 

But  in  many  ways  Berg  benefited  by  the  French  rule. 
Count  Beugnot,  the  Imperial  Commissioner  by  whom  the 
government  of  the  Grand  Duchy  was  carried  on,  was  one  of 
the  best  of  the  officials  employed  by  Napoleon.  Honest, 
painstaking  and  zealous,  under  his  auspices  the  French 
administration  was  a  model  of  order,  method  and  definition : 
it  was  bureaucratic  and  absolute,  it  did  nothing  to  teach  the 
people  to  govern  themselves,  but  it  was  systematic,  diligent, 
careful,  prompt  and  decided.  The  French  substituted  good 
and  simple  laws  for  the  chaos  of  conflicting,  obsolete  customs 
and  statutes  which  had  hitherto  prevailed.  They  abolished 
caste  privileges,  broke  down  the  monopoly  of  land  possessed 
by  the  gentry,  made  all  trades  and  professions  free  to  all  to 


1812]  GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON'S  MERCY 


555 


enter,  and  enormously  improved  the  social  and  economic 
situation  of  the  peasantry.1  Public  works,  education,  religious 
toleration,  the  jury  system,  the  French  codes,  the  French 
judicial  system,  were  among  the  benefits  of  French  rule,  and 
the  abuses  which  they  had  swept  away  were  exorcised  once 
and  for  all.  Thus  though  Murat  ceded  Berg  to  Napoleon 
in  July  1808,  and  the  Grand  Duchy  remained  without  a 
sovereign  till,  in  March  1809,  Napoleon  suddenly  conferred 
it  on  his  five  year  old  nephew,  Napoleon  Louis,  son  of  the 
King  of  Holland;  though  in  January  1811  the  Grand  Duchy 
was  deprived  of  the  portions  North  of  the  Lippe,  which  were 
then  annexed  to  the  French  Empire  as  the  Departments  of 
Lippe  and  Ems  Sup6rieur,  it  needed  all  the  grinding  tyranny 
of  the  conscription  and  the  Continental  System  to  provoke 
the  riots  which  preceded  the  arrival  of  the  delivering  Cossacks 
in  November  1813. 

The  largest  and  most  important  of  Napoleon’s  new  creations 
was  that  erected  for  his  brother  Jerome.  Its  constitution, 
promulgated  on  November  15th,  1807,  was  a  marked  advance 
on  anything  which  the  Hessians  who  formed  so  large  a  part 
of  Jerome’s  new  subjects  had  yet  known.  Besides  the  four 
ministers  to  whom  the  departments  of  the  administration  were 
entrusted,2  and  a  Council  of  State  nominated  by  the  King  to 
give  advice  on  administrative  matters,  draft  laws  and  act  as 
a  court  of  appeal,  the  kingdom  was  given  elected  Estates  which 
would  really  seem  to  have  been  something  more  than  a  mere 
form.  That  the  kingdom  was  divided  into  departments,  of 
which  there  were  eight,  and  subdivided  into  districts  and 
cantons,  that  the  Civil  Code  was  introduced,  the  old  seigneurial 
jurisdiction  swept  away  to  make  room  for  a  judicial  hierarchy 
on  the  French  model,  that  the  Church  was  subordinated  to  the 
State  and  no  small  portion  of  its  revenues  diverted  to  other 
purposes,  some  beneficial  others  the  reverse,  that  education 
was  carefully  organised,  that  feudalism  was  abolished,  labour 
services  done  away  with  or  made  commutable  for  money- 
payments,  all  this  was  the  natural  result  of  the  application 
of  French  principles  of  government  to  Westphalia.  Life  was 
made  easier  and  simpler  in  many  respects,  personal  freedom 

1  Cf.  Fisher,  pp.  202-205. 

2  Namely,  Justice  and  the  Interior  ;  War  ;  Finance,  Commerce  and  the  Treasury, 
and  a  Minister  of  State. 


556  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809- 


and  practical  equality  before  the  law  were  great  boons. 
Commerce  was  freed  from  the  barriers  and  restrictions  which 
had  hitherto  impeded  it,  and  the  substitution  of  one  system 
of  finance,  and  that  system  thoroughly  modern  and  enlightened, 
for  the  complications  which  had  hitherto  prevailed  in  the 
different  provinces  from  which  the  kingdom  had  been  made 
up  was  a  great  improvement.  Exemptions  disappeared,  with 
them  went  a  multitude  of  minor  imposts,  difficult  and  trouble¬ 
some  to  collect,  and  unproductive  at  the  best.  Import  and 
export  duties  were  so  arranged  as  to  permit  the  normal 
development  of  the  resources  of  the  country.  If  the  Kingdom 
of  Westphalia  had  been  in  fact  what  it  was  in  name,  a  free 
and  independent  state,  it  might  have  arrived  at  no  small  pitch 
of  prosperity.  Had  the  districts  which  separated  it  from  the 
sea  been  added  to  it,  it  might  have  become  what  the  House 
of  Brunswick-Liineburg  might  have  created  but  had  failed  to 
create,  a  strong  and  united  state,  to  be  in  North-Western 
Germany  what  Bavaria  was  in  the  South-West.  If  the  Hessians 
seem  to  have  regretted  their  old  rulers,  the  Brunswickers  were 
reconciled  to  the  new  order  by  the  advantages  it  brought  them, 
and  Prussia  had  not  apparently  made  herself  so  dear  to  her 
Westphalian  provinces  that  they  found  the  separation  hard  to 
bear.  But  the  interests  of  the  Westphalian  peoples  had  not 
been  the  object  for  which  the  kingdom  had  been  created. 
Napoleon  had  only  his  own  benefit  in  view  when  he  built  it 
up:  the  selection  of  Jerome  as  its  king  was  in  itself  a  sufficient 
proof  of  this. 

At  first  energetic  and  active,  Jerome  was  by  nature  too 
indolent,  too  self-indulgent,  too  easy-going  for  the  assiduous 
devotion  to  his  duties  which  his  position  demanded.  Self- 
sacrifice  and  hard  work  were  not  to  be  looked  for  from  him. 
He  had  able  ministers :  von  Billow,  a  Prussian,  looked  after 
the  finances  with  skill  and  integrity,  and  when  he  incurred 
Napoleon’s  displeasure  and  was  dismissed  (April  1811), 
Malchus,  his  successor,  proved  as  able,  if  harsher  and  less 
honest.  In  the  Baron  de  Wolffradt,  Jerome  possessed  a 
capable  Minister  of  the  Interior,  formerly  a  faithful  servant 
of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick,  who  had  taken  service  with  his 
new  master  at  the  request  of  his  old. 

Idle,  vicious,  and  devoid  of  moral  strength  as  Jerome  was, 
ill-suited  for  the  position  he  occupied,  the  harm  he  brought  upon 


1 8 1 2 J  GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON’S  MERCY 


557 


his  subjects  was  a  mere  trifle  compared  with  the  mischief 
wrought  by  the  heavy  hand  of  Napoleon.  To  one  ignorant 
of  the  circumstances  under  which  the  kingdom  of  Westphalia 
came  into  existence,  and  judging  by  the  treatment  it  received 
from  Napoleon,  it  would  hardly  seem  that  the  country  owed  its 
creation  to  the  Emperor  of  the  French.  Rather  one  might 
suppose  that  it  was  a  kingdom  on  which  he  desired  to  avenge 
himself  for  some  signal  slight  or  injury.  Westphalia  was 
compelled  to  keep  up  an  army  of  25,000  men,  half  of  whom 
were  Frenchmen,  an  army  which  fought  Napoleon’s  battles 
in  Spain  1  at  the  expense  of  Westphalia,  instead  of  paying  its 
way  by  being  hired  to  foreign  Powers,  after  the  manner  of  that 
of  Hesse-Cassel  in  times  past.  Moreover,  Jerome’s  kingdom 
had  to  support  a  permanent  charge  on  the  royal  domains  of 
7,000,000  francs  in  favour  of  France;  and  it  started  its  career 
with  the  heavy  incubus  of  a  debt  of  30,000,000  francs,  repre¬ 
senting  the  indebtedness  incurred  by  the  Elector  of  Hesse  for 
all  his  rigid  parcimony;  another  of  8,000,000,  the  cost  of  the 
French  occupation  during  1807;  and  worst  of  all,  of  a  war 
indemnity  of  26,000,000  more. 

To  support  such  a  burden  was  quite  beyond  the  capacities 
of  the  kingdom  and  even  Napoleon  had  to  admit  this,  and 
to  consent  to  modify  the  terms.  In  January  1810  a  new  treaty 
handed  over  to  Westphalia  most  of  the  rest  of  Hanover,  and 
reduced  the  indemnity  to  the  more  moderate  dimensions  of 
16,000,000  francs,  and  extended  the  time  within  which  it  had  to 
be  paid  from  eighteen  months  to  ten  years.  Still  even  this  relief 
was  only  partial.  Westphalia  had  to  maintain  18,500  French¬ 
men  in  addition  to  her  own  army  of  25,000  men,  and  Napoleon 
demanded  the  annual  payment  of  4,500,000  francs  from  the 
Hanoverian  domains  for  a  term  of  ten  years.  The  negotiations 
over  the  cession  were  still  far  from  complete  when,  in  December 
1810,  the  exigencies  of  enforcing  the  Continental  System  led  to 
the  annexation  by  Napoleon  of  the  coast  districts  of  Germany 
from  the  Ems  to  Lubeck.  Napoleon’s  object  in  bringing  these 
lands  under  his  more  immediate  control  was  to  enforce  the 
decrees  of  Fontainebleau  (Oct.  1810),  which  established  special 

1  There  was  a  Westphalian  division  with  St.  Cyr  in  Catalonia  in  1809, 
mustering  over  5000  men  ;  by  June  1st,  1810,  it  had  been  reduced  to  four  battalions. 
A  Westphalian  cavalry  regiment  also  formed  part  of  the  main  invading  army 
in  1808. 


558  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809- 


tribunals  to  try  persons  suspected  of  introducing  prohibited 
goods,  and  to  check  the  extensive  system  of  smuggling  by 
which  his  attempt  to  keep  out  British  goods  was  being  cir¬ 
cumvented.  The  districts  thus  forcibly  incorporated  in  the 
French  Empire  included  the  Hanseatic  towns  which  had  been 
in  French  occupation  since  the  end  of  1806,1  and  their  fate 
was  shared  by  the  Duchy  of  Oldenburg,  the  Principalities  of 
Aremberg  and  Salm,  and  not  avoided  even  by  Napoleon’s  own 
creations,  Berg  and  Westphalia.  The  Northern  part  of  Hanover 
was  thus  withdrawn  from  Jerome,  and  with  it  went  the  greater 
part  of  the  Westphalian  department  of  the  Weser. 2  In  vain 
Jerome  protested :  in  the  end  he  was  lucky  to  obtain  the 
reduction  of  the  French  troops  whom  he  had  to  support  to 
their  old  number  of  12,500;  in  the  territorial  rearrangement  he 
had  to  acquiesce  with  the  best  grace  he  could  muster. 

Where  Napoleon  treated  his  own  creations  with  such  severity, 
it  was  not  likely  that  the  lot  of  Prussia  would  be  particularly 
happy.  Of  the  means  by  which  Napoleon  continued  to  hold 
Prussia  down,  of  the  great  indemnity  he  had  extorted  from  her, 
and  of  his  interference  with  the  composition  of  the  Prussian 
ministry,  some  account  has  already  been  given.3  That  despite 
all  this,  and  despite  the  hostility  and  suspicion  with  which 
Napoleon  regarded  the  country  he  had  injured  so  sorely, 
Prussia  should  have  carried  out  in  these  years  of  distress  social 
and  military  reforms  of  the  utmost  importance,  makes  the 
achievement  all  the  more  remarkable.  The  names  which 
must  always  be  associated  with  this  work  are  those  of  Stein 
and  Scharnhorst.  The  latter’s  share  in  the  regeneration  of 
Prussia,  though  of  the  utmost  importance,  was  of  a  more 
restricted  character  than  that  of  Stein,  although  when  one 
seeks  to  estimate  their  relative  work  for  Prussia  it  must 
be  remembered  that  Stein  was  only  in  office  from  the 
October  of  1807  till  the  following  December,  that  much  of 
the  necessary  preliminaries  to  his  great  measures  had  been  done 
by  others,  and  that  his  work  was  continued  by  others  after 
he  had  to  fly  from  the  wrath  of  Napoleon.  Still  it  is  Stein 
who  best  represents  the  new  Prussia.  Himself  an  Imperial 
Knight,  his  position  as  a  Prussian  patriot  and  minister  is 

1  Cf.  Fisher,  ch.  xv. 

2  Roughly  corresponding  to  the  bishopric  of  Osnabrlick, 

3  Cf.  Chapter  XXVII, 


1 8 1 2 ]  GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON’S  MERCY 


559 


typical  of  the  way  in  which  the  rising  tide  of  German 
national  feeling  was  to  make  for  the  future  aggrandisement 
of  Prussia.  Indeed,  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  nearly  all  the 
men  who  played  the  chief  parts  in  the  regeneration  of  Prussia 
were  not  Prussians  by  birth.  Mecklenburg  gave  her  Bliicher, 
to  Hanover  she  owed  Hardenberg  and  Scharnhorst,  Gneisenau 
was  a  Saxon.  But  a  common  hatred  of  Napoleon  seems  to  have 
caused  them,  as  it  were  instinctively,  to  seek  the  service  of  the 
one  German  state  which  owed  Napoleon  nothing  but  injuries, 
and  was  to  that  extent  marked  out  as  a  likely  disciple  of  the 
gospel  of  vengeance. 

Roughly  speaking,  the  work  of  Stein  was  to  adapt  to  the 
requirements  of  Prussia  the  work  of  the  French  Revolution. 
Prussia  already  possessed  highly  centralised  institutions  and  all 
the  machinery  needed  for  a  benevolent  despotism  :  the  Hohen- 
zollern  family  was  identified  with  the  traditions  of  a  vigorous 
and  active  personal  rule,  and  Frederick  William  III,  even  if 
deficient  in  the  promptness  and  decision  of  Frederick  William  I, 
or  of  Frederick  II,  did  not  altogether  fail  to  carry  out  his  task  : 
his  share  in  the  reform  of  his  kingdom  is  more  often  unduly 
depreciated  than  exaggerated.  Briefly  stated,  what  Stein 
did  for  Prussia  and  for  the  Hohenzollern  was  to  inaugurate  a 
series  of  important  social  reforms  and  to  identify  the  dynasty 
with  this  work.  He  did  not  create  the  Prussian  bureaucracy, 
but  he  reformed  it,  swept  away  inefficiency  and  corruption,  and 
infused  it  with  fresh  vigour. 

It  is  with  the  reform  of  the  administration  that  Stein  is  most 
peculiarly  connected  :  that  was  his  special  work.  When  he 
came  into  office  the  General  Directory  had  practically  gone 
to  pieces,  the  King  relied  on  his  Cabinet  Secretaries,  the 
departments  were  without  proper  correlation  or  supervision. 
This  increased  the  trouble  caused  by  its  want  of  unity,  by  the 
cross  division  between  departments  whose  clashing  produced 
great  confusion. 

Stein’s  plan  included  the  erection  of  a  Council  of  State 
to  control  the  administration,  audit  the  accounts  of  the 
ministers,  decide  disputes  between  the  departments,  and 
legislate.  It  was  to  include  the  ministers  and  ex-ministers, 
all  Princes  of  the  blood  over  the  age  of  eighteen,  and  other 
persons  specially  appointed.  For  purposes  of  administration 
the  Council  was  to  be  divided  into  five  departments,  those 


560  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809. 


of  Foreign  Affairs,  War,  Justice,  Finance,1  and  the  Interior.2 
This  plan  was  not  carried  out  in  its  entirety,  but  the  edicts 
of  December  18th  reforming  the  central  administration,  and 
of  the  26th  reforming  the  provincial  government,  were  almost 
identical  with  Stein’s  unratified  edict  of  November.  The 
Council  of  State  did  not  come  into  existence  till  1810,  and 
even  then  it  did  not  control  the  administration ;  but  on  the 
whole  Stein’s  ideas  were  accepted. 

In  local  government,  Stein  abolished  the  War  and  Domains 
Chambers,  which,  originally  merely  financial  bodies,  had  become 
administrative  and  judicial  also.  He  now  divided  the  provinces 
into  districts  ( Bezirke ),  in  each  of  which  “  deputations  ”  corre¬ 
sponded  to  the  departments  of  the  Directory.  The  old  provincial 
arrangements  were  so  far  kept  up  that  Superior  Presidents 
were  appointed  to  exercise  a  general  supervision  over  groups 
of  districts,  and  to  deal  with  special  emergencies.  Justice  was 
separated  from  administration,  rural  tribunals  being  created 
for  minor  judicial  work. 

Stein’s  aims  did  not  stop  at  mere  reforms  in  degree.  He 
was  anxious  to  introduce  in  some  form  or  another  representative 
institutions,  possibly  a  national  Parliament.  It  is  as  a  step  in 
this  direction  that  the  Municipal  Reform  Edict,  published  in 
November  1808, 3  is  most  interesting.  The  towns  of  Germany  had 
in  the  18th  Century  fallen  into  great  decay.  True  municipal 
life  hardly  existed.  Narrow  oligarchies  controlled  the  few 
towns  where  the  forms  of  self-government  had  not  given 
place  to  the  rule  of  royal  officials,  appointed  quite  regardless 
of  their  fitness  for  the  posts  they  held.  This  edict  gave  the 
townsfolk  control  of  their  property,  the  State  only  interfering  to 
see  that  its  own  rights  were  respected  and  its  laws  observed  ; 
it  placed  in  their  hands  local  government,  justice  and  police  ; 
it  freed  them  from  their  manorial  lords,  and  placed  them  all 
in  the  same  relation  to  the  State,  the  only  distinctions  it  observed 
being  those  of  size.4  This  grant  of  municipal  self-government 
was  a  free  gift,  in  no  sense  a  concession  ;  indeed  it  was  given  to 

1  Including  the  Treasury  and  the  commissions  for  managing  the  Taxes  and  the 
Domains  and  Forests. 

2  Under  this  head  were  comprised  Education,  Public  Health,  Mining,  Police 
and  Trade. 

3  Cf.  Seeley,  ii.  238-243. 

4  Towns  with  over  10,000  inhabitants  were  classed  as  “  great,”  those  having  from 
3500  to  10,000  as  “  medium,”  those  with  from  800  to  3500  as  “  small.” 


i8i2]  GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON'S  MERCY 


$61 

people  not  always  well  prepared  or  anxious  for  it.  “  The 
people  were  commanded,  not  allowed,  to  govern  themselves.,,  1 

With  this  Municipal  Reform  must  be  connected  the  famous 
Emancipating  Edict  of  October  9th,  1807. 2  This  great  measure 
had  been  discussed  by  an  Intermediate  Commission  in  July  1807. 
The  Report  of  August  17th  showed  how  urgent  was  the  neces¬ 
sity  for  free  trade  in  land  ;  how  the  impoverished  landowners 
could  not  sell  part  of  their  estates  and  so  obtain  the  money  they 
needed,  because  the  middle-class  capitalists  who  had  the  money 
to  invest  were  not  allowed  to  purchase  noble  land  (. Rittergut ). 
Hardenberg’s  Memorandum  of  September  17th  drew  an  outline 
of  the  measures  embodied  in  the  edict,  and  it  would  seem  that 
the  idea  of  establishing  free  trade  in  land  originated  with  Schon, 
while  the  work  of  drafting  the  edict  was  performed  by  Stage- 
mann  :  still  Stein  took  up  the  project  warmly,  supported  it  with 
all  his  might,  made  it  of  universal  application,  and  it  was  he 
who  carried  it  through.3 

The  edict  was  fully  in  accord  with  his  principle  of  removing 
all  artificial  hindrances  in  the  way  of  the  full  development  of 
the  country.  Divided  as  the  population  of  Prussia  was  into 
distinct  classes,  separated  as  into  water-tight  compartments 
by  the  strictest  lines  of  caste,  nobles,  citizens  and  peasants  had 
hardly  anything  in  common;  for  while  the  peasantry  did  come 
into  contact  with  the  nobles  as  landlords  and  as  officers  in  the 
army,  the  citizens  were  not  even  brought  into  line  with  their 
fellow-subjects  through  the  army,  being  non-military  in  the 
extreme.  What  Stein  did  was  that  he  managed  to  abolish 
caste  in  persons  and  in  land ;  for  the  division  extended  not 
merely  to  the  owners  but  to  their  estates.4  Prussia  had  hitherto 
been  divided  into  manors,  with  a  primitive  and  rigid  organisa¬ 
tion  :  the  peasants  were  subject  to  heavy  burdens,  but  they  were 
at  least  secure  against  the  caprice  and  arbitrary  punishments 
of  their  landlords.  They  had  a  secure  tenure  and  a  definite 
status.  But  this  was  restrictive  as  well  as  protective :  they 
could  not  rise  beyond  their  status.  Stein’s  object  was  to  open 
all  careers  to  every  one,  and  the  Edict  of  Emancipation  made 
the  occupation  of  the  peasants  voluntary  and  no  longer 
obligatory.5  This  celebrated  edict 6  abolished  personal  serfdom, 

1  Seeley,  ii.  244. 

3  Ibid.  i.  446. 

5  Ibid.  ii.  185. 

3b 


2  Ibid,  i.  430. 

4  Ibid.  i.  437. 

G  For  the  text,  cf.  Seeley,  i.  443  (T. 


562  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809- 


and  especially  menial  services,  together  with  forced  labour ;  but 
it  did  not  free  the  peasants  from  the  obligations  by  which  they 
were  bound  as  free  persons  through  the  possession  of  an  estate 
or  by  special  contracts.  To  these  they  continued  to  be  liable ; 
and  the  opponents  of  the  measure  attacked  it  vehemently, 
because  it  put  the  peasants  at  the  mercy  of  their  creditors,  and 
by  encouraging  them  to  sell  their  land,  took  away  the  fixity 
of  tenure  their  definite  status  had  hitherto  secured  to  them. 

What  amount  of  force  there  was  in  this  charge  had  more 
validity  against  the  edicts  by  which  after  Stein’s  dismissal 
Hardenberg1  completed  his  work.  These  followed  on  the  lines 
Stein  had  laid  down.  That  of  November  1810  was  based  on 
the  principle  that  no  one  should  have  the  power  to  close  a  trade 
against  any  man.  By  this  and  by  the  more  celebrated  Edict  of 
September  18 n, 2  which  freed  leasehold  and  copyhold  alike  from 
all  services,  and  established  alienability  and  free  disposition  of 
property,  Hardenberg  wrought  a  great  change  in  Prussia,  His 
solution  of  the  land  question  took  the  form  of  a  compromise. 
The  peasantry  were  divided  into  two  classes,  leaseholders  and 
those  who  had  hereditary  or  life  claims  on  their  tenements.  It 
was  proposed  to  let  the  landlords  buy  out  the  first  class  by 
giving  them  half  their  holdings,  for  compensation  in  money  was 
altogether  out  of  the  question  from  the  want  of  cash  in  the 
country.  Finally,  copyholders  for  life  were  subjected  to  the 
same  arrangement,  hereditary  tenants  compensating  their  land¬ 
lords  by  surrendering  a  third  of  their  tenements.  This  system 
had  been  anticipated  by  Stein  when,  in  July  1808,  he  had  relieved 
the  needs  of  the  peasantry  on  the  royal  domains  in  Prussia, 
among  whom  serfdom  had  been  abolished  as  long  ago  as  the 
reign  of  Frederick  William  I.  He  had  adopted  a  scheme  of 
Schrotter’s,3  which  allowed  the  peasants  to  possess  their  holdings 
as  their  own,  subject  to  land-tax  and  to  the  resumption  by  the 
State  of  various  rights  and  concessions.  At  the  same  time, 
much  was  done  in  the  way  of  abolishing  monopolies;  for  instance, 
that  of  making  and  selling  millstones  and  building  mills,  hitherto 
in  the  hands  of  the  Government,  was  abolished  by  Stein  for 
Prussia  only  in  the  spring  of  1808,  for  the  whole  kingdom  by 
Hardenberg  in  the  two  following  years. 

Reforms  in  the  judicial  system,  aiming  at  even  and  speedy 


1  Recalled  to  office  as  Chancellor  in  1810. 

2  Cf.  Seeley,  ii.  185.  a  Ibid.  ii.  192. 


1 8 1 2 ]  GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON’S  MERCY 


563 


justice,  with  equality  before  the  law,  financial  measures,  including 
the  imposition  of  an  income  tax  (Sept.  1811),  the  abolition  of 
that  exemption  from  taxation  which  the  nobles  had  hitherto 
enjoyed,  the  establishment  of  a  State  Bank,  and  the  introduc¬ 
tion  of  a  paper  currency,  were  among  the  objects  with  which 
Hardenberg  was  occupied  during  his  tenure  of  the  Chancellor¬ 
ship.  In  this  capacity  he  did  Prussia  excellent  service,  even  if 
he  seemed  to  have  abandoned  the  cause  of  opposition  to  Napoleon 
and  dissembled  his  hatred  of  the  Emperor  so  well  that  even 
Stein  distrusted  him.1  But  to  secure  the  success  and  continuity 
of  these  reforms  something  more  was  wanting.  It  was  useless 
to  introduce  reforms  unless  provision  could  be  made  that  there 
should  be  men  to  work  them,  and  to  work  them  in  the  right  way. 
It  had  not  been  the  machinery  but  the  morale  of  Prussia  which 
had  failed  her  in  1806,  and  one  of  the  most  pressing  needs  was  a 
thorough  reform  of  the  system  of  education,  both  primary  and 
secondary.  The  rising  generation  must  be  taught  the  necessity 
of  patriotism  and  civic  duty,  the  gymnasia  must  be  reformed, 
and  something  done  to  repair  the  loss  inflicted  on  Prussian 
education  by  the  cession  of  Halle  and  its  University  to 
Westphalia.  With  this  branch  of  the  regeneration  of  Prussia 
the  name  of  William  von  Humboldt  will  always  be  associated. 
Appointed  Minister  of  Public  Instruction  in  1809,  he  was  largely 
responsible  for  the  foundation  in  the  August  of  that  year  of  the 
University  of  Berlin,  supported  by  the  State  with  a  grant  which 
must  have  been  a  severe  tax  on  its  already  burdened  exchequer. 
The  share  of  this  University  in  keeping  alive  the  spirit  of  oppo¬ 
sition  to  foreign  rule  and  in  identifying  Prussia  with  the  growing 
feeling  of  German  nationality  was  destined  to  be  no  small  one, 
and  in  1811  a  sister  University  was  established  at  Breslau  to 
help  in  the  work. 

Parallel  with  the  civil  and  social  reorganisation  of  Prussia, 
went  the  reform  of  that  army  on  whose  traditions  and  past 
glories  Prussia  had  relied  with  such  fatal  effect  in  1806.  Re¬ 
form  was  essential,  but  there  was  still  a  school  of  military  thought 
which  adhered  to  its  belief  that  a  dead  lion  was  superior  to 
any  number  of  living  animals  of  other  species,  and  therefore  re¬ 
sisted  all  attempts  at  departure  from  the  Frederician  system.  On 
the  Military  Reorganisation  Commission,  of  which  Scharnhorst 
had  been  appointed  President,  both  schools  were  represented, 

1  Cf.  Seeley,  ii.  462. 


564  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809. 


the  Frederician  being  stronger  in  numbers,  the  more  modern 
school  powerful  through  the  character  of  its  representatives. 
Scharnhorst  himself,  Gneisenau  the  brave  defender  of  Colberg, 
and  von  Grolmann,  a  young  major  of  great  zeal  and  capacity. 
These  three  were  in  full  accord  as  to  the  essential  needs,  the 
formation  of  a  reserve  outside  the  standing  army,  the  nationalisa¬ 
tion  of  the  army  by  uniting  all  classes  in  its  ranks,  and  the 
substitution  of  a  discipline  of  reason  and  humanity  for  the 
savage  rule  by  terror  which  was  the  ideal  of  the  Frederician 
school.1  These  proposals  provoked  much  opposition,  both  in 
the  Commission  and  in  the  army  as  a  whole ;  but  the  King  was 
heartily  with  the  reformers,  remodelled  the  Commission  so  as  to 
give  them  the  upper  hand,  and  supported  them  in  most  of  the 
changes  they  introduced. 

Naturally  the  first  steps  taken  were  in  the  direction  of  getting 
rid  of  the  inefficient  and  incompetent  officers  who  had  been  re¬ 
sponsible  for  the  shameful  surrenders  of  1806,  of  dismissing  the 
foreigners  of  whom  there  had  always  been  so  large  a  number  in 
the  army  since  the  practice  of  enlisting  them  had  been  intro¬ 
duced  by  Frederick  II,  of  opening  the  commissioned  ranks  to 
non-nobles,  of  improving  the  morale  of  the  troops  by  ameliorat¬ 
ing  the  conditions  and  the  terms  of  their  service.  But  these 
were  only  details  compared  with  the  great  change  Scharnhorst 
desired  to  introduce.  Frederick  William  I  had  established  the 
principle  that  a  subject  is  by  the  fact  of  his  allegiance  bound  to 
serve  his  master ;  but  the  exemptions  so  freely  granted  and  the 
large  enlistment  of  foreigners  had  made  it  almost  a  dead  letter. 
Scharnhorst  desired  to  make  national  defence  the  primary  duty 
of  every  citizen,  to  cause  it  to  be  regarded  as  a  privilege  not  a 
burden,  and  he  favoured  the  establishment  of  a  national  militia 
which  would  also  serve  as  a  bond  of  political  union.  This  was 
more  than  Frederick  William  was  quite  prepared  for;  he  rather 
dreaded  the  political  effects  of  the  arming  of  the  masses,  while 
the  Radicals  feared  that  military  training  would  destroy  culture. 
But  it  was  Napoleon  who  forced  a  decision  by  the  famous  clause 
in  the  Convention  of  September  8th,  1808,  which  fixed  the 
strength  of  the  Prussian  Army  at  42,000  and  forbade  the 
organisation  of  a  militia.  Accordingly,  Scharnhorst  adopted 
the  plan  of  passing  through  the  ranks  as  large  a  number  of 
men  as  possible,  letting  them  serve  for  such  a  period  only  as 
1  Cf.  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1806-1871 ,  i.  pp.  223  ft'. 


1812]  GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON’S  MERCY 


565 


was  necessary  to  give  them  an  adequate  military  training,  and 
then  dismissing  them  to  their  homes.  This  “furlough  system,” 
established  by  a  Cabinet  Order  of  August  6th,  1808,  provided  for 
a  steady  stream  of  recruits  coming  forward  to  replace  the  men 
dismissed  to  their  homes;  and  thus,  despite  Napoleon’s  conditions, 
a  reserve  of  trained  men  was  built  up.  These  men  on  furlough 
were  maintained  in  an  efficient  condition  by  secret  drilling, 
sergeants  being  sent  round  the  country  for  the  purpose,  by 
which  means  Napoleon’s  refusal  to  allow  the  formation  of  a 
Landwehr  was  circumvented. 

Scharnhorst,  however,  did  riot  escape  Napoleon’s  notice. 
When,  in  1810,  on  the  fall  of  Stein’s  successor,  Altenstein, 
Hardenberg  was  with  Napoleon’s  consent  called  to  office,1  the 
Emperor  insisted  that  Scharnhorst  should  be  dismissed.  This, 
of  course,  took  place ;  but  Scharnhorst  did  not  have  to  imitate 
Stein  in  flying  from  Prussia :  he  remained  in  the  kingdom,  and 
took  a  very  large  share  in  the  work  of  military  reorganisation 
nominally  carried  on  by  his  successor,  Hake. 

But  though  in  these  various  ways  and  at  the  expense  of 
many  of  the  old  traditions  of  the  Frederician  system  a  new 
Prussia  was  being  built  up  out  of  the  ruins  of  the  edifice  which 
had  collapsed  at  Jena,  Prussia  had  still  to  drain  the  cup  of 
humiliation  to  the  dregs.  She  had  remained  inactive  in  1809; 
but  when,  in  1812,  Central  Europe  was  once  more  plunged  into 
war  by  Russia’s  refusal  to  continue  to  enforce  the  Continental 
System,  it  was  not  with  inaction  that  Napoleon  was  content. 
Prussia’s  last  humiliation  was  the  Convention  of  February  24th, 
1812,  which  made  her  little  more  than  the  advanced  base  of  the 
French  invasion  of  Russia.  Not  only  did  she  have  to  send  a 
contingent  of  20,000  to  Napoleon’s  army,  she  had  to  collect  vast 
magazines  of  supplies  for  his  use,  and  to  place  the  country  and 
all  its  fortresses  and  resources  at  his  disposal. 

For  between  1809  and  1812  a  great  change  had  come  over 
Napoleon’s  foreign  relations.  Russia  was  no  longer  the  ally, 
Austria  no  longer  the  enemy.  With  the  substitution  of  the  re¬ 
actionary  and  opportunist  Metternich  for  Stadion,  Austria  had 
abandoned  her  championship  of  German  nationalism,  and  had 
readily  accepted  Napoleon’s  overtures.  Metternich  was  utterly 
unaffected  by  sentimental  considerations.  The  traditions  of 
the  Holy  Roman  Empire  were  nothing  to  him  ;  he  was  only 

1  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1806-1871 ,  i.  264. 


566  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809- 


moved  by  the  new  feeling  of  German  nationality  inasmuch  as  it 
aroused  his  suspicions  and  dislike.  Anything  in  the  way  of  a 
popular  movement  was  sure  to  arouse  the  bitterest  hostility  in 
him.  A  reactionary,  narrow  and  suspicious,  he  hated  Napoleon 
as  the  man  who  had  humiliated  Austria  and  deprived  her  of 
provinces  and  prestige,  not  as  the  representative  of  military 
despotism  or  as  the  oppressor  of  Germany.  But  when  Napoleon 
showed  signs  of  a  wish  to  make  friends  with  Austria,  the  hope 
of  future  favours  made  Metternich  only  too  ready  to  overlook 
past  injuries. 

The  outward  sign  of  these  better  relations  was  Napoleon’s 
marriage  to  Archduchess  Marie  Louise,  celebrated  at  Vienna 
not  nine  months  after  the  battle  of  Wagram  (March  nth,  1810). 
The  haughty  Hapsburgs  thus  descended  almost  to  the  level  of 
the  Wittelsbachs  and  the  other  families  with  whom  the  Bona- 
partes  had  been  pleased  to  form  marriage  alliances.  Neverthe¬ 
less,  Metternich  failed  even  to  secure  the  concessions  he  had 
hoped  to  obtain  ;  for  Napoleon  hurried  Prince  Schwarzenberg, 
the  Austrian  Ambassador  at  Paris,  into  signing  the  convention 
(Feb.  7th),  so  that  he  might  be  able  to  counter  the  Czar’s  re¬ 
jection  of  the  overtures  he  had  made  for  the  hand  of  a  Russian 
Princess  by  the  accomplished  fact  of  his  Austrian  match. 

This  was  one  of  the  causes  of  disagreement  between 
Napoleon  and  his  ally  of  Tilsit.  More  serious  was  the  Con¬ 
tinental  System.  Russia  found  her  interests  and  her  commercial 
prosperity  injured  by  her  faithful  fulfilment  of  Napoleon’s 
demands.  Alexander  could  not  help  recalling  the  circumstances 
of  his  father’s  death :  why  should  he  sacrifice  the  trade  of 
Russia  to  a  quarrel  which  was  not  his  own  ?  Moreover, 
Napoleon’s  measures  for  the  enforcement  of  the  Continental 
System  were  going  beyond  Alexander’s  powers  of  endurance. 
The  annexation  of  the  German  coast-lands  from  the  Ems  East¬ 
ward  (Dec.  13th,  1810)  was  a  high-handed  act  which  would, 
however,  hardly  have  aroused  Alexander’s  wrath  so  much  had  it 
not  involved  the  suppression  of  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Oldenburg, 
held  by  his  cousin,  Duke  Peter.  Russia’s  reply  to  this  was  the 
ukase  of  December  31st,  1810,  imposing  heavy  taxes  on  French 
wines,  and  permitting  the  importation  of  colonial  products  under 
a  neutral  flag.  This  was  practically  a  defiance  of  Napoleon  ;  and 
though  the  rupture  was  delayed  for  more  than  another  year,  it 
was  henceforward  inevitable. 


1812]  GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON’S  MERCY 


567 


To  come  to  blows  with  Russia  there  was  only  one  road 
which  Napoleon  could  take,  and  that  lay  through  Germany,  so 
that  the  conflict  was  bound  to  be  of  vital  importance  to  Germany 
even  if  the  question  at  issue  had  not  really  been  the  continuation 
of  Napoleon’s  predominance  over  Europe.  But  as  Germany 
stood  in  1812,  the  choice  of  the  line  to  be  taken  was  not  hers 
to  make.  The  states  which  formed  the  Confederation  of  the 
Rhine  were  pledged  to  assist  Napoleon,  even  though  the 
Continental  System  which  Russia  was  refusing  to  endure  any 
longer  pressed  even  more  heavily  on  them  than  on  the  subjects 
of  the  Czar.  In  Russia  there  were  no  interfering  French  Custom¬ 
house  officers  to  make  domiciliary  visits :  no  Russian  shop¬ 
keeper  need  fear  to  be  dragged  off  to  the  galleys  for  the  heinous 
crime  of  possessing  goods  of  English  origin.  Yet  to  these  and 
similar  infringement  of  their  liberty  the  Germans  had  been  liable 
ever  since  the  Fontainebleau  decrees  ;  and  while  the  export  trade 
of  Germany  was  practically  at  a  standstill,  tobacco,  coffee,  tea 
and  sugar,  luxuries  so  common  as  to  be  practically  necessities, 
could  only  be  obtained  with  great  difficulty  and  at  famine  prices. 
Germany  was  under  a  tyrant  against  whom  she  could  hope  for 
no  redress,  and  her  sufferings  in  this  way  only  emphasised  her 
helplessness.  Austria  also  was  about  to  send  a  contingent  to 
aid  Napoleon.  The  hope  of  obtaining  some  return  for  her 
services  combined  with  jealousy  of  Russia’s  success  in  the 
Balkans  to  bring  about  this  result.  Metternich,  indeed,  was 
able  to  represent  this  action  as  unavoidable.  To  take  the 
side  of  Russia  was  out  of  the  question,  neutrality  without 
mobilisation  would  be  perilous,  armed  neutrality  too  expensive 
to  be  considered  :  Austria  must  therefore  take  part  in  the 
invasion,  but  her  part  in  the  campaign  was  typical  of  her  real 
sentiments.  The  30,000  men  of  whom  her  contingent  consisted 
took  care  to  do  as  little  as  possible  for  their  ally :  they  formed 
a  separate  corps  and  thus  preserved  the  appearance  of  inde¬ 
pendence;  while  the  assistance  they  gave  Napoleon  was  of 
no  serious  importance,  chiefly  consisting  of  letting  Chichagoffs 
forces  slip  unmolested  past  their  front  on  their  way  from  the 
Lower  Danube  to  the  Beresina. 

Prussia  in  like  manner  had  to  decide  between  the  desirable 
and  the  possible,  between  defying  her  oppressor  by  throwing  in 
her  lot  with  Russia,  and  submitting  to  Napoleon’s  requirements. 
The  question  was  soon  settled.  Krusemarck’s  convention  was 


568  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1809- 


hailed  by  the  “  patriots  ”  as  the  death-blow  to  their  hopes.  “  We 
have  signed  our  own  death-warrant/’  wrote  Gneisenau,  and 
he  and  Boyen  and  Clausewitz  resigned  their  commissions  in 
disgust  and  left  the  country.  “  All  is  lost,  and  honour  with  it,” 
was  Bluchers  comment ;  but  the  alternative  was  impossible.  If 
Prussia  joined  Russia,  the  Russian  forces  would  have  to  deprive 
themselves  of  an  ally  far  more  valuable  than  even  the  regenerated 
Prussian  army,  the  physical  difficulties  which  their  country 
would  place  in  an  invader’s  way.  Alone,  Prussia  could  do 
nothing :  for  the  Russians  to  advance  beyond  the  Niemen  would 
only  invite  a  repetition  of  1807.  The  Convention  of  February 
24th  was  a  humiliation,  but  it  was  the  necessary  corollary  of 
Prussia’s  previous  policy. 

Thus  all  Germany  stood  on  Napoleon’s  side  as  he  advanced 
Eastward.  In  the  army  which  invaded  Russia  there  were  almost 
as  many  Germans  as  Frenchmen.1  Thus  the  whole  Vlth  Corps 
(28,000  men)  was  composed  of  Bavarians,  the  Vllth  (19,000)  of 
Saxons,  the  Vlllth  (19,000)  of  Westphalians.  The  contingents 
of  Baden,  Mecklenburg  and  Hesse-Darmstadt  formed  part  of 
Davout’s  huge  1st  Corps;  in  the  Ilnd  Corps  were  included  the 
men  of  the  Hanseatic  towns  ;  the  Wurtembergers  marched  under 
Ney  in  the  Illrd  Corps,  the  men  of  Berg  and  the  minor  states 
came  up  later  with  Victor.  Macdonald’s  Xth  Corps  included 
the  Prussian  contingent  and  a  mixed  division  of  Bavarians, 
Westphalians  and  Poles.  In  like  manner  four  of  Murat’s  eleven 
cavalry  divisions  were  made  up  of  Germans  and  Poles.  In  all 
some  1 50,000  men  from  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  formed 
part  of  the  Grand  Army,  about  a  quarter  of  the  total,  while 
among  the  200,000  “  Frenchmen  ”  in  its  ranks  a  small  number 
must  have  come  from  the  departments  on  the  left  bank  of  the 
Rhine,  formerly  part  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  Indeed,  if 
one  includes  in  the  reckoning  the  Austrian  and  Prussian  con¬ 
tingents,  the  German  element  in  the  army  of  invasion  was 
probably  larger  than  any  German  army  ever  collected  by  the 
rulers  of  Germany  for  an  enterprise  in  which  the  interests  or  the 
aspirations  of  Germany  were  concerned.  Napoleon  had  united 
Germany  in  a  way  her  own  Princes  and  peoples  had  never  united 
her  before.  But  the  heart  of  Germany  was  not  in  the  invasion. 
It  was  with  the  utmost  reluctance  that  the  Prussian  contingent 

1  Cf.  H.  B.  George,  Napoleon's  Invasion  of  Russia ,  which  is  also  very  useful  fqr 
the  attitude  and  policy  of  Austria  and  Prussia  at  this  period, 


1812]  GERMANY  AT  NAPOLEON’S  MERCY 


569 

marched  against  the  forces  on  whom  the  last  hopes  of  Prussia 
rested  ;  how  little  zeal  for  the  cause  inspired  the  Austrians  has 
already  been  described  ;  and  if  in  the  contingents  of  the  Con¬ 
federation  there  were  many  who  had  good  reason  to  be  grateful 
to  Napoleon  for  the  benefits  his  rule  had  brought  them,  there 
were  also  many  who  had  been  dragged  from  their  homes  to 
serve.  Yet  there  was  no  approach  to  disaffection  or  treachery 
among  the  Germans  in  the  Grand  Army.1  The  poor  success 
which  attended  the  efforts  of  Stein  and  the  Duke  of  Oldenburg 
to  organise  a  German  Legion  out  of  them  is  a  testimony  to  the 
hold  which  Napoleon  had  over  his  vassals.  Few  of  the  prisoners 
enlisted,  fewer  still  deserted  the  Grand  Army  to  join  the  Legion  ; 
and  even  if  the  privations  they  had  endured  may  have  accounted 
for  their  unwillingness  to  undergo  new  hardships  under  new 
colours,  it  also  shows  that  the  long-suffering  Germans  were  not 
yet  fully  roused  against  Napoleon,  or  lacked  the  courage  and  the 
determination  to  risk  anything  for  Germany.  But  so  far  as 
German  nationalism  was  a  real  thing  and  had  a  real  existence, 
it  was  all  against  Napoleon. 

And  to  some  degree  cosmopolitanism  and  localism  were 
beginning  to  give  way  to  a  national  feeling.  The  period  is  one 
of  the  utmost  importance  in  German  literature ;  and  though  for 
the  most  part  the  great  writers  of  the  day  pursued  their  own 
lines  of  intellectual  development,  quite  regardless  of  the  political 
situation  of  their  country,  some  few  did  turn  towards  it.  The 
Tugendbund ,  founded  at  Konigsberg  in  1808  for  the  revival 
of  “  morality,  religion  and  public  spirit,”  and  suppressed  at 
Napoleon’s  instance  in  the  following  year,  was  in  the  main 
the  work  of  these  same  “  intellectuals  ”  who  had  hitherto  held 
aloof  from  politics  ;  and  even  if  it  and  the  secret  societies  to  which 
its  suppression  gave  rise  really  effected  but  little,  their  formation 
is  an  indication  of  the  new  order  of  things.  The  career  of  the 
philosopher  Johann  Gottlieb  Fichte  is  typical  of  this  change  from 
the  cosmopolitan  to  the  national  ideal.  His  Grundziigen  des 
Zeitalters  of  1 806  has  only  to  be  compared  with  the  Reden  an  die 
Deutschen  Krieger ,  written  two  years  later.  Patriotism  and  the 
fate  of  his  country  were  nothing  to  him  before  1806,  but  that 
autumn  of  misfortune  and  disgrace  changed  his  attitude.  He 
now  urged  on  his  hearers  at  Berlin  the  adoption  of  a  national 
system  of  education  as  the  only  way  to  cure  the  evils  of  localism 

1  Cf.  George,  pp.  49-50. 


570  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1812 


and  lack  of  union :  he  preached  a  gospel  of  self-sacrifice  for  the 
national  welfare,  and  called  on  all  Germans  to  sink  local 
differences  in  striving  for  a  common  end. 

Another  writer  who  exercised  a  great  influence  over  his 
fellow-countrymen,  rousing  them  to  a  sense  of  their  common 
interests  and  common  sufferings,  was  the  poet  Heinrich  von 
Kleist.  Keenly  alive  to  the  degradation  and  humiliating 
position  of  Germany,  he  read  the  present  into  the  past :  his 
H ermanns-schlact  is  really  prophetic,  not  historic  ;  anti-Gallican- 
ism  inspires  it;  to  him  the  Romans  are  Frenchmen,  and  French¬ 
men  only. 

The  rise  of  this  feeling  was  assisted  by  the  great  development 
of  universities  all  over  Germany.  In  Bavaria  Maximilian 
Joseph  abolished  the  Jesuit  schools  at  Bamberg  and  Dillingen, 
freed  Munich  and  Wurzburg  from  clerical  control,  and  called  in 
North  German  professors  of  great  repute.  In  Baden  von 
Reizenstein,  the  enlightened  minister  of  the  Grand  Duke,  did 
much  to  revive  Heidelberg  University,  and  the  Theological 
Faculty  in  that  body  played  an  important  part  in  rousing 
national  feeling.  Of  the  University  of  Berlin  and  von  Humboldt, 
mention  has  already  been  made ;  but  great  as  was  the  direct 
service  to  education  which  Humboldt  thus  gave,  of  even  more 
importance  was  the  indirect  result  of  his  work.  Till  now  the 
great  intellects  of  Germany  had  been  cosmopolitan  in  their 
outlook,  non-national  if  not  actively  anti-national  in  their  ideas. 
What  Humboldt  did  was  to  enlist  culture  on  the  side  of  the 
State,  to  turn  the  intellectual  movement  into  a  patriotic  channel, 
to  reconcile  the  widely  different  schools  of  thought  represented 
by  Goethe  and  Stein. 

Thus,  despite  the  great  reception  which  Napoleon  held  at 

Dresden  on  his  way  to  the  Niemen,  despite  the  good  service 

done  by  the  German  troops  in  his  army — some  idea  of  this  may 

be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  there  were  no  less  than  186 

Westphalian  officers  in  the  casualty  list  at  Borodino,1  and  that 

one  Bavarian  light  cavalry  regiment  could  only  muster  2 

officers  and  30  men  at  the  close  of  the  day2 — Germany  as  a 

whole  waited  for  the  fate  of  the  expedition  with  feelings  in 

which  anxiety  for  her  sons  was  mixed  with  hopes  for  her 

oppressor’s  failure. 

«• 

1  Cf,  Fisher,  p.  305.  2  Deutsche  Geschi elite,  1806-1871 ,  i.  289. 


GERMANY  in  1811. 


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CHAPTER  XXX 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 

COMPLETELY  as  Napoleon’s  great  invasion  of  Russia  had 
failed  his  repulse  had  by  no  means  settled  the  question  of 
his  supremacy  over  Central  Europe.  His  yoke  was  too  firmly 
fixed  upon  Germany,  Italy  and  the  Netherlands  to  be  thrown 
off  in  a  moment,  and  after  only  one  defeat ;  and  the  completeness 
of  his  control  of  France  may  be  estimated  by  the  prodigious 
efforts  he  was  able  to  command  from  France  to  retrieve  his  lost 
prestige.  Though  the  shattered  and  demoralised  relics  of  the 
Grand  Army  which  had  straggled  back  across  the  Niemen  in 
December  1812  hardly  mustered  a  sixth  of  the  mighty  host 
which  had  crossed  it  on  the  Eastward  way,  it  was  far  from  certain 
that  1813  might  not  see  the  attack  renewed  by  a  new  Grand 
Army.  Napoleon,  who  had  hurried  off  to  Paris,  had  thrown 
himself  with  characteristic  energy  into  the  Herculean  task  of 
reorganisation,  and  never  were  his  great  talents  as  an  admini¬ 
strator  more  conspicuously  displayed.  Russia,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  much  exhausted  by  her  exertions  ;  she  had  worsted  Napoleon, 
but  it  had  been  at  no  light  cost  that  such  a  victory  could  be 
achieved  over  the  master  of  Western  Europe.  Many  of  her 
generals  and  statesmen,  among  them  Kutusov  himself,  were 
strongly  opposed  to  the  idea  of  risking  anything  in  an  attempt 
to  follow  up  the  success  of  the  defensive  campaign.  They 
judged,  and  rightly,  that  all  depended  on  the  action  of  Austria 
and  Prussia.  Unless  Russia  could  rely  on  the  co-operation  of 
those  two  Powers,  to  advance  across  the  Niemen  would  merely 
court  disaster. 

And  as  yet  neither  Austria  nor  Prussia  saw  the  way  clear 
before  them.  Much  as  Frederick  William  longed  to  throw  off 
the  yoke  of  Napoleon,  he  could  not  at  first  nerve  himself  to  the 
desperate  step  of  defying  the  Emperor,  not  even  when  Metter- 
nich  opened  negotiations  and  showed  himself  anxious  to  turn 
Napoleon’s  misfortunes  to  the  advantage  of  his  unwilling  allies.1 

1  Cf.  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1806-1871,  i.  299,  also  La  Defection  de  la  Prusse, 

57i 


572  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


And  Metternich  was  only  preparing  to  run  with  the  hare  in  case 
hunting  with  the  hounds  should  prove  too  dangerous  a  policy. 
Jealousy  of  Russia  was  with  him  a  far  stronger  motive  than 
hostility  to  France:  he  had  no  intention  of  shaking  Napoleon’s 
supremacy  off  Central  Europe  only  to  substitute  that  of  the  Czar. 
Public  opinion  in  Austria  might  be  strongly  in  favour  of  the 
bolder  policy,  but  Metternich  had  no  desire  for  a  conflict  with 
Napoleon ;  all  he  wanted  was  an  opportunity  of  establishing  an 
equilibrium  in  Europe  which  should  secure  the  independence  of 
Central  Europe  by  balancing  West  against  East ;  he  wanted  a 
peace  in  which  Napoleon  would  for  once  not  dictate,  but  accept 
terms.  Schwarzenberg,  it  is  true,  went  to  the  length  of  disobey¬ 
ing  Eugene’s  orders  to  assist  him  in  holding  the  line  of  the 
Vistula,  and  withdrew  with  the  Austrian  auxiliary  corps  into 
Galicia  (January);  but  no  immediate  breach  in  the  alliance 
between  Austria  and  Napoleon  followed  :  Metternich  was  waiting 
on  events.  However,  while  the  governments  were  hesitating, 
the  control  of  events  was  taken  out  of  their  hands  by  men  who 
had  a  more  accurate  appreciation  of  the  possibilities  of  the  case. 

Among  these  the  place  of  honour  must  be  given  to  General 
Yorck,  the  commander  of  the  Prussian  corps  which  had  formed 
part  of  Marshal  Macdonald’s  command.  With  that  officer  Yorck 
had  soon  quarrelled,  and  as  early  as  October  the  Russians  were 
making  overtures  to  him  in  the  hope  that  he  would  join  them 
and  help  them  to  cut  off  the  retreat  of  the  Grand  Army.  Yorck 
had  acquainted  his  King  with  these  offers  ;  but  as  he  had  received 
no  new  instructions,  but  only  orders  to  assume  the  Governorship 
of  East  Prussia,  he  had  taken  no  further  step.  However,  when, 
in  December,  Macdonald  ordered  a  retreat,  Yorck  deliberately 
allowed 1  Wittgenstein’s  Russians  to  interpose  between  himself 
and  Macdonald,  and,  under  the  plea  of  being  isolated,  proceeded 
to  enter  into  negotiations  with  the  Russians.  On  December  30th, 
acting  entirely  on  his  own  responsibility,  he  took  the  momentous 
step  of  concluding  the  Convention  of  Tauroggen.  By  this  the 
Prussian  troops  under  Yorck  were  to  take  post  in  the  territory 
between  Memel,  Tilsit  and  the  Plaff,  which  was  to  be  neutralised. 
Should  the  convention  be  repudiated  either  by  the  Czar  or  by 
the  King  of  Prussia,  they  were  to  be  free  to  depart,  but  were  not 
to  serve  against  Russia  before  March  1st. 

The  immediate  result  of  this  was  that  Macdonald  found  it 

1  La  Defection  de  la  Prusse ,  pp.  115-118, 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 


573 


1813] 

impossible  to  maintain  himself  at  Tilsit,  and  retired  from  Konigs- 
berg  to  Dantzic.  However,  the  political  importance  of  Yorck’s 
action  in  thus  disassociating  a  Prussian  force  from  the  alliance 
with  France  was  far  greater  than  the  mere  military  results  of  the 
step.  What  would  the  King  do?  would  he  ratify  his  general’s 
bold  action  by  declaring  against  Napoleon  ?  would  he  treat  Yorck 
as  guilty,  as  technically  he  certainly  was,  of  high  treason,  and 
disown  him  ?  At  first  the  chances  seemed  to  favour  this  second 
alternative.  To  take  arms  against  Napoleon  was  by  no  means 
so  simple  a  matter  as  it  might  seem  to  those  who  had  no  thought 
for  anything  but  the  sufferings  and  the  humiliation  which 
Prussia  had  endured  at  his  hands.  The  overthrow  of  Napoleon, 
even  when  accomplished,  would  merely  bring  up  new  difficulties. 
Napoleon  had  made  too  many  changes  in  the  political  com¬ 
plexion  of  Germany  for  the  removal  of  his  yoke  to  restore 
Germany  to  the  condition  in  which  it  had  been  before  its  subjec¬ 
tion  to  his  influence.  The  fate  of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine 
promised  a  superfluity  of  contentious  matter,  and  it  was  only 
one  among  several  problems.  Thus  Frederick  William  with  the 
idea  of  appeasing  Napoleon  did  actually  disown  Yorck  and 
order  his  arrest ;  but  Wittgenstein  prevented  the  written  order 
reaching  Yorck’s  quarters,  Biilow  in  West  Prussia  acknowledged 
him  as  Governor  of  East  Prussia,  and  his  summons  to  the  levee 
en  masse  of  East  Prussia  was  obeyed  with  an  alacrity  and  an 
enthusiasm  which  left  no  doubt  as  to  the  attitude  of  the  popula¬ 
tion.  In  Eastern  Germany  the  peasantry  had  not  received  at 
Napoleon’s  hands  those  benefits  which  his  rule  had  brought  to 
Westphalians  and  Swabians :  to  them  he  was  only  the  enemy 
and  the  oppressor,  the  author  not  of  the  Code,  but  of  the  Conti¬ 
nental  System. 

It  was  fortunate  for  the  patriotic  party  in  Germany  that  at 
this  moment  Stein  should  have  been  in  Alexander’s  confidence. 
More  accessible  to  the  influence  of  ideas  than  was  Francis  II  or 
Frederick  William  III,  the  Czar  listened  to  Stein’s  advice,  and, 
caught  by  the  notion  of  associating  his  name  with  the  liberation 
of  Germany,  decided  to  come  forward  as  the  champion  of  the 
cause  Stein  had  so  much  at  heart.  Thus  with  insurrection 
already  on  foot  in  East  Prussia,  the  Czar  committed  to  a  forward 
policy,  and  Austria  letting  it  be  known  that  she  would  not  oppose 
it  since  her  aim  was  a  peace  which  could  ensure  Europe  against 
Napoleon’s  undue  predominance,  with  Hardenberg  supporting 


574  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


Scharnhorst’s  pleadings  in  favour  of  a  bolder  policy,  Frederick 
William’s  doubts  were  solved  for  him.  But  it  was  only  gradually 
that  the  decision  was  reached.  The  first  step  was  taken  when 
Frederick  William  retired  from  Berlin  to  Breslau,  partly  in  order 
to  be  more  out  of  the  way,  and  so  better  able  to  avoid  a  collision 
with  Napoleon,  partly  because  he  had  some  idea  of  trying  to 
keep  Silesia  neutral  by  denying  it  to  both  parties.  But  when, 
on  February  12th,  the  troops  in  Pomerania  and  Silesia  were 
mobilised,  and  volunteers  were  called  for  to  bring  them  up 
to  establishment,  recruits  flocked  in  with  a  zeal  and  a  keenness 
which  went  far  to  decide  Frederick  William’s  mind.  So  insistent 
was  the  popular  clamour  and  the  demand  to  be  led  against  the 
French,  that  on  February  27th  a  treaty  was  negotiated  at  Kalisch 
which  definitely  committed  Prussia  to  hostility  to  Napoleon,  and 
confirmed  the  decision  the  King  had  made  four  days  earlier. 
This  treaty  pledged  Russia  to  continue  the  war  until  Prussia 
regained  the  territories  she  had  possessed  before  1806 ;  but  it  was 
understood  that  the  restoration  should  not  include  Hanover,  and 
that  Prussia  would  give  up  her  claims  to  the  greater  part  of  the 
acquisitions  she  had  made  from  Poland  in  1793  and  1795.  These 
reservations  were  most  necessary :  without  the  second,  Prussia 
could  not  hope  to  secure  the  indispensable  Russian  aid,  while 
her  claim  on  Hanover  had  contributed  as  much  as  anything  to 
the  ruin  of  the  Third  Coalition,  and  if  persisted  in  now  could 
not  fail  to  lead  to  trouble  with  Great  Britain,  whose  help  was  no 
less  important. 

Meanwhile  both  sides  were  straining  every  nerve  to  get 
ready  for  the  coming  campaign.  While  the  relics  of  the  Grand 
Army  had  been  thrown  into  the  fortresses  of  Poland  and  Prussia 
and  were  endeavouring  to  hold  the  line  of  the  Vistula,  and  so 
keep  the  Russians  at  bay,  Napoleon  was  devoting  all  his 
marvellous  energy  and  powers  of  organisation  to  the  creation  of 
an  even  vaster  army  with  which  to  wipe  out  the  memories  of 
his  defeats.  The  raw  material  he  had  ready  to  hand.1  Over 
1 30,000  of  the  conscripts  of  1813  had  already  been  called  out, 
and  had  been  drilling  at  the  depots  since  November  1812.  A 
decree  of  the  Senate  of  January  nth,  1813,  placed  at  his  disposal 
100,000  men  belonging  to  the  classes  of  past  years  who  had 
hitherto  escaped  service,  and  also  anticipated  the  conscription  of 
1814  by  calling  up  150,000  men  not  due  till  that  year.  The 

1  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  pp.  59-70. 


1813] 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 


575 


National  Guard  had  already  provided  80,000  men,  the  so-called 
“  Cohorts/’  who  had  already  been  under  arms  for  a  year  and 
were  now  formed  into  regiments  of  the  Line,  another  80,000  of 
the  same  force  being  called  upon  a  little  later  to  fill  their  places. 
For  a  leaven  by  which  these  masses  of  recruits  might  be  turned 
into  efficient  soldiers,  Napoleon  was  so  fortunate  as  to  have 
among  the  survivors  of  the  Grand  Army  some  20,000  more 
officers  and  under-officers  than  were  needed  by  the  units  under 
Eugene  and  in  the  fortresses  on  the  Vistula.  Without  these  in¬ 
valuable  veterans  the  campaign  of  1813  would  have  been  impos¬ 
sible.  Had  the  news  of  the  decision  to  retire  from  Moscow  found 
Prussia  prepared  to  rise  in  Napoleon’s  rear  and  so  to  intercept 
the  retreat  of  the  Grand  Army,  she  could  have  paralysed  the 
military  resources  of  France  and  averted  the  awful  loss  of  life 
in  the  campaigns  of  1813  and  1814.  Such  a  step  was,  however, 
impossible.  Prussia  was  too  securely  held  down  under 
Napoleon’s  heel,  and  the  famished  remnant  of  the  Grand  Army 
was  on  the  Niemen  before  the  full  extent  of  the  disaster  was 
realised  throughout  Germany.  The  Emperor  also  recalled  from 
every  battalion  of  the  army  in  Spain  150  men  to  serve  as  the 
nucleus  of  the  new  units ;  he  summoned  from  retirement  every 
half-pay  officer,  every  veteran  still  capable  of  service ;  he  stripped 
his  useless  fleets  of  marines  and  of  seamen  to  provide  his  new 
army  with  artillerymen.  By  these  means  he  succeeded  in 
getting  together  an  enormous  force.  Nor  was  it  only  on  France 
alone  that  he  made  these  vast  demands.  His  vassal  states  had 
to  provide  their  contingents,  and  no  small  number  of  Germans 
were  called  upon  to  do  battle  to  keep  Germany  in  subjection 
to  Napoleon.  Thus  Westphalia  had  to  put  into  the  field 
close  upon  30,000  men,1  while  from  Berg  over  4000  were 
demanded. 

Numbers  alone  do  not  make  an  army;  and  while  time  was 
needed  to  drill,  train  and  equip  the  new  levies,  their  1  norale  and 
readiness  to  fight  were  considerations  of  even  greater  import¬ 
ance.  On  the  whole,  there  was  no  fault  to  be  found  with  the 
spirit  shown  by  the  French  recruits.  Many,  of  course,  deserted  ; 
but  the  great  traditions  of  the  French  army,  the  magic  of  the 
Emperor’s  personality,  the  warlike  spirit  of  the  nation,  were  not 
slow  to  assert  themselves.  With  the  recruits  of  the  vassal  states 
things  were  naturally  rather  different ;  but  it  was  noticeable  that 

1  Cf.  Fisher,  p.  305. 


576  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


though  the  Italian  and  Illyrian  recruits  deserted  in  large 
numbers  and  the  Bavarians  hung  back,  the  contingents  of 
Baden,  Wiirtemberg  and  other  minor  states  came  forward 
readily  enough.  A  Thuringian  battalion  raised  by  the  petty 
Princes  of  that  district  who  belonged  to  the  Confederation  of 
the  Rhine  did,  it  is  true,  desert  as  a  body  to  the  Prussians  just 
before  Ltitzen,  and  two  battalions  were  formed  by  the  Prussians 
from  deserters  coming  from  the  former  provinces  of  Prussia 
West  of  the  Elbe;1  but  the  South  and  West  of  Germany  was  as 
a  whole  still  loyal  to  Napoleon,  partly,  no  doubt,  from  necessity, 
but  in  no  small  measure  from  choice. 

To  meet  these  vast  preparations  the  Allies  had  also  to  make 
a  great  effort.  The  Russians  had  suffered  very  heavily  indeed 
in  1812  ;  and  though  large  reserves  were  on  their  way  Westward, 
they  had  far  to  travel  and  the  force  at  the  front  was  but  weak. 
Much,  therefore,  depended  on  Prussia  and  in  Prussia  on  the 
measure  of  success  which  should  attend  Scharnhorsfs  plans 
when  put  to  the  proof.  Thanks  to  the  system  of  rapidly 
passing  through  the  ranks  a  succession  of  trained  men,  he  had 
little  difficulty  in  bringing  up  to  their  full  establishment  the 
46  battalions  and  80  squadrons  to  which  Napoleon  had 
restricted  the  Prussian  army.  Indeed,  the  reservists  came 
forward  in  such  strength  that  it  was  possible  to  organise  42  new 
battalions.2  But  this  was  by  no  means  all :  volunteers  also  flocked 
to  the  colours  in  numbers,  full  of  enthusiasm  and  patriotism, 
anxious  to  throw  off  Napoleon’s  yoke,  many  of  them  belonging 
to  the  classes  hitherto  exempt  from  military  service.  These 
for  the  most  part  formed  themselves  into  Free  Corps,  providing 
their  own  uniforms  and  equipment,  doing  little  drill,  and  relying 
mainly  on  their  shooting.  Some  of  them  were  formed  in 
companies  and  attached  to  the  regulars  for  skirmishing  work, 
while  others  were  organised  as  separate  units,  of  which  Liitzow’s 
is  the  best  known.  In  partisan  warfare,  in  raids  against  French 
communications,  in  cutting  off  messengers  and  stragglers,  these 
corps  did  no  small  service.  However,  Scharnhorst  wisely 
desiring  a  more  solid  reserve  for  the  troops  of  the  Line  than 
these  somewhat  tumultuary  organisations,  brought  forward  a 
measure  based  on  the  Landwehr  organisation  adopted  by 

1  Friedrich,  i.  41. 

2  These  were  known  as  “Reserve  Regiments,”  and  must  not  be  confused  with 
the  Landwehr . 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 


577 


1813] 

Austria  in  1809.1  A  royal  proclamation  of  February  9th  de¬ 
clared  national  defence  to  be  a  duty  incumbent  on  the  whole 
nation,  another  of  March  17th  authorised  the  levy  of  120,000  men 
by  conscription.  Lots  were  to  be  drawn  among  the  men  between 
1 7  and  40  years  of  age,  while  the  upper  classes  were  brought 
into  connection  with  the  scheme  through  the  measures  adopted 
for  providing  the  equipment.  Behind  this  force  were  to  stand 
as  a  last  resource  the  Landsturm ,  armed  with  such  weapons  as 
they  could  get,  and  carrying  out  somewhat  miscellaneous  duties. 
The  poverty  of  Prussia  and  the  exhausted  state  of  the  country 
made  the  equipment  of  all  these  recruits  a  very  difficult  matter. 
Had  better  weapons  been  forthcoming  much  more  could  have 
been  done  and  a  larger  force  placed  in  the  field  ;  but  though  a 
certain  amount  of  help  in  money  and  stores  was  received  from 
England,  that  country,  whose  action  in  Germany  was,  of  course, 
much  influenced  by  its  connection  with  Hanover,  looked  rather 
towards  rousing  an  insurrection  in  the  old  territories  of  the 
Guelphs,  and  was  making  the  equipment  of  an  Anglo-German 
design  in  that  quarter  its  chief  effort.2  Prussia  was  thus  thrown 
mainly  on  her  own  resources ;  and  great  as  was  the  readiness  of 
the  whole  nation  to  contribute  all  it  could  scrape  together,  not 
even  the  patriotism  and  self-sacrifice  which  all  classes  displayed 
could  create  resources  which  did  not  exist.  Thus  though  troops 
of  a  sort  were  forthcoming  to  blockade  the  French  garrisons, 
there  were  not  many  more  than  60,000  Prussians  ready  for  the 
field  in  April,  without  including  Free  Corps.  The  Landwehr 
for  the  most  part  were  too  ill-supplied  to  be  fit  for  field  service. 

It  was  on  March  15th  that  Frederick  William  issued  simul¬ 
taneously  his  declaration  of  war  and  his  appeal  to  his  subjects 
to  support  him  in  his  struggle  for  liberty.  Four  days  later, 
Nesselrode  and  Stein  acting  for  Russia,  and  Hardenberg  and 
Scharnhorst  for  Prussia,  drew  up  the  Convention  of  Kalisch.  In 
this,  in  the  spirit  of  their  denunciation  of  the  Confederation  of 
the  Rhine  as  the  work  of  the  foreign  tyrant,  they  provided  that 
any  German  Prince  who  within  a  certain  prescribed  time  should 
not  have  joined  the  Allies,  should  be  liable  to  be  deprived  of 
his  territory.3  At  the  same  time,  arrangements  were  made  for 

1  The  Landwehr  produced  some  149  battalions  of  infantry,  averaging  nearly  700, 
with  116  squadrons  of  cavalry,  rather  under  100  strong. 

2  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  19. 

3  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1S06-1S71 ,  i.  pp.  323-324. 

37 


578  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


the  administration  of  such  portions  of  North  Germany  as  might 
come  into  the  hands  of  the  Allies. 

As  yet  the  actual  outbreak  against  Napoleon  in  Germany 
was  confined  to  Prussia,  though  the  feelings  which  prompted  it 
were  no  less  strong  in  other  quarters.  In  Austria  there  was  a 
strong  nationalist  movement.  An  influential  party,  headed  by 
Archduke  John  and  recalling  the  ideas  of  Stadion,  earnestly 
desired  to  join  the  opponents  of  Napoleon  and  to  recover 
Tyrol  and  the  other  provinces  of  which  he  had  despoiled  the 
Hapsburgs.  This  party  aimed  at  an  Alpenbund ,  an  alliance 
between  Tyrol,  Illyria,  Switzerland,  Salzburg  and  the  Vorarlberg 
which  would  serve  as  the  nucleus  for  a  South  German  rising 
against  Napoleon.1  But  its  views  were  very  far  from  finding 
favour  in  Metternich’s  eyes.  Much  as  he  hated  Napoleon’s 
predominance,  he  hated  democracy  and  Liberalism  more,  and 
he  was  most  anxious  to  prevent  anything  in  the  way  of  a 
popular  movement.  If  he  could  manage  it,  the  reduction  of  the 
undue  greatness  of  France  should  be  achieved  by  the  govern¬ 
ments,  not  by  the  peoples.2  Moreover,  he  knew  that  neither 
the  financial  nor  the  military  situation  of  Austria3  was  such 
as  to  make  war  desirable,  he  distrusted  Russia  and  was  deter¬ 
mined  to  thwart  her  schemes  of  self-aggrandisement,  while  he 
was  little  better  disposed  to  Prussia.  A  neutral  position  was 
therefore  what  he  desired  to  adopt,  since  it  offered  most 
prospect  of  settling  the  whole  matter  by  diplomacy  without  an 
appeal  to  arms.  For  it  was  this  which  was  his  chief  object. 
Neither  the  Austrian  minister  nor  his  master  seems  to  have 
contemplated  joining  Napoleon,  not  even  when  he  attempted 
to  bribe  them  with  Silesia  and  Illyria  (March  27th).  If  they 
departed  from  their  attitude  of  neutrality  it  would  be  to  join 
Napoleon’s  opponents  ;  but  their  hope  was  to  avoid  having  to 
take  this  step.  Accordingly,  though  Metternich  went  so  far  in 
the  direction  of  joining  the  Allies  as  to  conclude  a  convention 
with  Russia  which  suspended  hostilities  and  allowed  Schwarzen- 
berg  to  withdraw  unmolested,  he  announced  to  Narbonne  that 
his  master  desired  “  peace,  and  nothing  but  peace,”  and  would 

1  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1806-1871,  i.  p.  329.  2  Ibid.  p.  325. 

3  After  the  disasters  of  1809  the  Austrian  army  had  been  restricted  to  a  strength 
of  150,000  men  and  its  regiments  were  exceedingly  weak,  so  that  much  time  was 
needed  before  they  could  be  brought  up  to  war  strength  by  levies  of  recruits  ;  cf. 
Friedrich,  i.  52-55. 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 


579 


1813] 

assume  a  mediatory  position,  mobilising  her  forces  to  procure 
respect  for  her  mediation.  Meanwhile,  to  prove  that  Austria 
had  no  intention  of  raising  the  banner  of  insurrection  in 
Germany,  he  induced  the  Emperor  to  have  Archduke  John 
arrested  and  sent  to  his  estates,  by  representing  to  the  jealous 
Francis  that  his  brother  was  aiming  at  erecting  for  himself  an 
independent  kingdom  of  “  Rhaetia.”  1 

The  attitude  of  Bavaria  was  largely  influenced  by  that  of 
Austria,  since  nothing  was  more  certain  than  that  Austria 
would  seek  to  recover  Tyrol.  A  premature  rising  of  the 
Tyrolese  would  make  relations  between  Austria  and  Bavaria 
very  awkward.  Thus  when  Prussia  sought  to  induce  Bavaria 
to  join  the  Allies,  or  at  least  to  send  no  assistance  to  Napoleon, 
offering  as  an  inducement  to  resign  all  claims  on  Anspach  and 
Baireuth,  Bavaria  was  hardly  prepared  to  desert  Napoleon. 
Montgelas  was  not  altogether  ill-disposed  to  the  notion,  but  he 
disliked  the  Prussian  appeal  to  the  people,  fearing  that  it  would 
lead  to  anarchy :  he  was  also  very  much  afraid  of  Napoleon  and 
was  alarmed  by  the  rumours  of  his  vast  preparations.  Thus  a 
Bavarian  contingent  was  in  the  end  to  be  found  under  Napoleon’s 
colours,  though  her  zeal  for  the  cause  was  decidely  evanescent. 

Somewhat  similar  was  the  plight  of  Saxony.  Prussia’s 
hostility  to  her  Southern  neighbour  was  notorious,  and  directly 
war  was  declared  by  Prussia,  Bliicher  seized  Cottbus2  in  the 
name  of  his  King.  Austria,  however,  was  much  more  kindly 
disposed :  indeed,  Metternich  was  almost  ready  to  promise 
Saxony  compensation  for  the  Duchy  of  Warsaw,  which  Alex¬ 
ander  was  resolved  to  annex,  and  in  April  a  convention  was 
concluded  between  Austria  and  Saxony,  the  latter  promising  to 
support  Austria  in  her  efforts  to  bring  about  a  peace.  The 
Allies  were  by  this  time  advancing  into  Saxony ;  and  before  their 
approach  King  Frederick  Augustus,  uncertain  what  course  to 
pursue,  fled  first  to  Plauen  and  then  to  Ratisbon.  In  his  absence 
the  people  of  Saxony  received  the  Allies  with  great  enthusiasm, 
though  the  officials  were  hostile,  and  the  Saxon  army  was  kept 
concentrated  at  Torgau  by  its  commander,  Thielmann,  well  out 
of  the  way. 

In  the  meantime  the  campaign  had  begun.  Eugene’s  effort 
to  hold  the  line  of  the  Vistula  had  been  frustrated  by  Schwarzen- 
berg,  who  evacuated  Warsaw  without  fighting  and  withdrew  to 
1  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  pp.  20  ff.  “  Cf.  p.  517. 


580  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


Galicia,  which  compelled  the  Viceroy  to  quit  Posen  (Feb.  12th) 
for  Frankfort  on  the  Oder,  by  which  Rapp  at  Dantzic  and  the 
other  French  garrisons  on  the  Vistula  were  left  isolated.  But 
the  line  of  the  Oder  was  in  its  turn  abandoned  when  raiding 
parties  of  Cossacks  crossed  the  river  and  began  to  threaten  the 
French  communications,  one  band  actually  penetrating  to  Berlin. 
By  the  first  week  in  March,  Eugene  had  fallen  back  to  the  Elbe, 
establishing  his  headquarters  at  Magdeburg.  Fie  had  left  gar¬ 
risons  in  the  principal  fortresses  on  the  Oder  which  it  would 
have  been  better  to  have  kept  with  the  field-army,  for  the  Allies, 
disregarding  these  obstacles,  pressed  on  after  him,  the  Russian 
advanced  guard  reaching  Berlin  (March  1  ith)  about  a  week  after 
he  had  left  it,  while  on  the  left  the  Prussians  from  Silesia  under 
Bliicher  moved  on  Dresden ;  and  farther  North,  Tettenborn’s 
Russian  light  troops  occupied  Hamburg  (March  18th),  which 
Carra  St.  Cyr  had  evacuated. 

As  Wittgenstein  continued  his  advance  on  Magdeburg 
(April  2nd),  he  fell  in  a  little  to  the  East  of  that  town  with 
Eugene,  who  had  taken  the  offensive  in  the  hope  of  catching  the 
Allies  unconcentrated.  The  effort  proved  a  failure,  for  a  sharp 
action  between  Nedlitz  and  Mockern  (April  5th)  ended  in  the 
retreat  of  the  French,  who  fell  back  across  the  Elbe  to  the  Saale, 
which  allowed  the  Russians  to  move  up  the  Elbe  to  Dessau, 
cross  there  (April  9th),  and  gain  touch  with  Bliicher  who,  after 
occupying  Dresden,  from  which  the  F'rench  had  withdrawn,  had 
pushed  on  to  the  Mulde. 

It  was  a  critical  situation  for  Napoleon,  for  had  the  Allies 
pressed  on  resolutely  they  might  have  fallen  upon  the  troops  he 
was  concentrating  to  support  Eugene — and  organising  and  train¬ 
ing,  too,  simultaneously  with  their  concentration — before  they 
could  be  ready  to  go  into  action.  Scharnhorst  pleaded  urgently 
for  such  a  move,  but  the  Allies  were  not  prepared  to  run  the  risk 
until  Miloradovitch’s  Russian  corps  could  come  up ;  and  this  was 
not  three  days  behind,  as  it  should  have  been,  but  fourteen.  Thus 
the  critical  moments  slipped  by,  and  on  April  24th  Napoleon 
arrived  at  Erfurt  and  was  within  supporting  distance  of  the 
Viceroy’s  troops  on  the  Saale.  The  Emperor  had  with  him  about 
80,000  men,  comprising  the  Guard  and  the  corps  of  Ney  (III.), 
Bertrand  (IV.),  Marmont  (VI.),  and  Oudinot  (XII.),  all  of  which 
were  mainly  composed  of  raw  recruits,  hastily  formed  into  bat¬ 
talions  and  imperfectly  trained  and  equipped.  He  was  very 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 


581 


1S13] 

weak  in  cavalry,  having  barely  8000  horsemen,  for  it  was  in  this 
arm  that  it  was  most  difficult  to  fill  the  gaps  which  1812  had 
made  ;  and  though  well  supplied  with  artillery,  his  army  was  one 
with  which  only  a  most  daring  general  would  have  ventured  to 
undertake  a  bold  offensive  movement. 

Yet  such  was  Napoleon’s  design.  Dresden  was  the  point  on 
which  he  was  moving,  though  Leipzig  was  his  immediate  objec¬ 
tive.  He  aimed  at  executing  the  converse  movement  to  that 
which  had  led  to  the  brilliant  success  of  Oct.  1806,  that  is,  he 
wished  to  fall  on  the  right  flank  of  his  enemy,  crush  it,  and  so 
push  through  to  the  Elbe  and  place  himself  between  them  and 
Prussia.1  Wittgenstein  also  meant  to  take  the  offensive.  He 
had  concentrated  the  field  army  of  the  Allies,  including  the 
Prussians  of  Blucher2  and  Yorck3  and  some  40,000  Russians, 
partly  under  his  own  command,  partly  under  Winzingerode,  in 
all  about  90,000  men,  to  the  South  of  Leipzig.  Despite  his 
inferior  numbers,  he  resolved  on  a  daring  stroke,  a  flank  attack 
on  the  French  as  they  moved  forward  on  Leipzig. 

Napoleon  had  reached  Weimar  on  the  28th  of  April,  and 
next  day  an  advance  to  Weissenfels  brought  his  columns  into 
touch  with  Eugene’s  men,  who  came  up  to  Merseburg.4  From 
the  Saale  Napoleon  pushed  forward  towards  Leipzig  by  Mark- 
ranstadt  and  Lindenau.  Meanwhile  Wittgenstein  moved  from 
behind  the  Elster  by  Pegau  on  Liitzen,  hoping  to  fall  on 
Napoleon’s  right  flank  and  rear,  and  by  surprising  the  young 
French  troops  to  throw  them  into  confusion. 

It  was  about  midday  on  May  2nd,  while  Napoleon  was 
watching  his  advanced  guard,  Lauriston’s  corps,  drive  Kleist’s 
Prussians  in  upon  Leipzig,  that  Wittgenstein  delivered  his  attack. 
To  cover  the  movements  of  the  rest  of  the  army  against  any 
interruption  from  the  Southward,  Napoleon  had  left  Ney’s  corps 
on  his  right  flank,  and  it  was  on  this  corps,  posted  between  the 
villages  of  Gross  Gorschen  and  Starsiedel,  that  Wittgenstein’s 
blow  fell.  Though  outnumbered,  Ney  offered  an  obstinate 
resistance,  clinging  resolutely  to  the  villages,  and  only  being 

1  Cf.  Yorck  von  Wartenburg,  ii.  247. 

2  52  squadrons  and  38  battalions. 

r>  16  squadrons  and  19  battalions. 

4  Eugene’s  force  comprised  the  corps  of  Lauriston  (V.),  composed  of  the  regiments 
formed  out  of  the  “cohorts”  of  the  National  Guards,  Eeynier  (VII.)  and  Macdonald 
(XI.),  these  last  two  representing  the  reserves  of  the  Grand  Army  which  had  escaped 
the  disaster  of  1812  :  he  had  in  all  some  70,000  men. 


582  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


forced  back  from  the  Gorschens  and  Rahna  to  Kaja  after  very 
heavy  fighting.  This  gave  Napoleon  time  to  alter  his  disposi¬ 
tions,  to  divert  to  their  right  Macdonald  and  the  Guard,  who 
had  been  following  Lauriston,  and  to  hasten  back  to  Ney’s 
succour.  Had  Ney  been  unsupported  he  must  have  been  over¬ 
powered,  but  Marmont’s  corps  came  up  on  his  right  and  relieved 
the  pressure  on  him  by  occupying  Starsiedel ;  and  of  this  village 
the  French  retained  possession  all  day,  Bertrand  arriving  about 
4  p.m.  and  supporting  Marmont.  Wittgenstein  had  to  devote 
all  his  Russians  to  the  contest  in  this  quarter,  and  thus  he  had 
no  troops  left  to  support  Blucher,  whose  success  in  driving  in 
Ney  from  the  villages  to  which  he  clung  so  tenaciously  could 
not  be  followed  up.  Indeed,  he  was  unable  to  maintain  the 
ground  he  had  won  ;  for  Napoleon,  judging  the  situation  critical, 
sent  the  Young  Guard  and  one  of  Marmont’s  divisions  forward 
against  Kaja,  retook  it  and  the  other  villages,  and  hurled  the 
Prussians  back.  The  arrival  of  some  Russian  reinforcements 
was  more  than  neutralised  by  that  of  Macdonald,  who  pushed 
forward  over  the  Flossgraben  against  the  Allied  right  and 
decided  the  day.  Had  Napoleon  had  any  cavalry  available  for 
the  pursuit,  he  might  have  done  much  ;  as  it  was,  the  Allies  were 
strong  enough  in  this  arm  to  secure  an  unmolested  retreat.  They 
had  lost  no  guns  and  very  few  prisoners,  and  the  15,000  casual¬ 
ties  they  had  suffered  were  exceeded  by  the  losses  they  had 
inflicted  on  the  French,  which  probably  amounted  to  25J000.1 
Still  the  battle  was  a  great  triumph  for  the  young  soldiers  of 
France,  more  especially  for  their  officers,  who  had  in  so  short  a 
time  made  their  raw  conscripts  capable  of  facing  the  Allies  in  a 
pitched  battle.  Discipline  they  had  not  yet  acquired,  and  it  was 
largely  because  his  army  was  neither  physically  nor  morally 
capable  of  great  exertions  immediately  after  a  battle  that 
Napoleon  was  unable  to  follow  up  the  battle  of  Gross  Gorschen 
as  he  had  followed  up  Jena.  He  did,  it  is  true,  push  on  in  the 
wake  of  the  retreating  Allies  to  Dresden,  which  he  occupied  on 
the  8th,  the  Allies  retiring  behind  the  Elbe ;  but  his  want  of 
cavalry  prevented  his  pursuit  from  doing  them  any  serious 
damage. 

Having  reoccupied  the  Saxon  capital,  Napoleon’s  next  step 
was  to  send  an  ultimatum  to  the  King  of  Saxony  demanding 
that  he  should  do  his  duty  as  a  Prince  of  the  Confederation  of 

-  Rousset,  La  Grande  Amide  dc  jSij,  p.  90. 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 


533 


1813] 

the  Rhine.  Frederick  Augustus,  impressed  by  the  spectacle  of 
Napoleon  again  victorious,  obeyed,  and  his  troops  took  the 
position  assigned  to  them  as  the  24th  and  25th  Divisions  in 
Reynier’s  (VII.)  corps.  Meanwhile  Vandamme  moved  North 
against  the  Allied  force  which,  after  occupying  Hamburg,  had 
crossed  the  Elbe  into  Hanover  and  inflicted  a  defeat  on  Morand’s 
division  at  Liineburg  (April  2nd).  The  nucleus  of  the  Allied 
force  in  this  quarter  consisted  of  some  Russian  troops  under 
Tettenborn ;  but  Swedish  help  was  expected,  and  it  was  to  this 
district  that  the  Russo-German  Legion,  organised  out  of  the 
German  prisoners  taken  in  1812,  was  sent.  But  in  addition  to 
these  forces,  much  was  done  in  the  way  of  raising  battalions 
among  the  inhabitants  of  North-Western  Germany  who  had 
suffered  so  much  from  Napoleon’s  Customs  officials.  In  this 
work  England  played  a  prominent  part,  providing  arms  and 
equipment  and  sending  over  to  Germany  some  500  men  of  the 
King’s  German  Legion  to  stiffen  the  new  levies,  while  the  3rd 
Hussars  and  two  artillery  batteries  of  that  force  together  with 
an  English  rocket  battery  of  the  Royal  Artillery  were  also 
added  to  this  very  miscellaneous  corps,  which  was  placed  under 
the  command  of  a  Hanoverian  general,  Count  Wallmoden.  The 
arrival  of  the  French  reinforcements  quite  changed  the  situation 
on  the  Lower  Elbe.  After  some  sharp  fighting  the  Allies  had 
to  retire  to  the  right  bank  of  the  river,  and  Hamburg  was  re¬ 
occupied  by  the  French  (May  30th).  Billow  also,  who  had  come 
up  to  Magdeburg  and  Wittenberg,  fell  back  to  Berlin,  and  the 
whole  line  of  the  Elbe  from  the  Bohemian  frontier  to  the  sea 
was  again  in  French  hands. 

Napoleon  did  not  spend  more  time  than  he  could  help  at 
Dresden.  The  victory  of  May  2nd  had  been  far  from  decisive, 
and  he  was  most  anxious  to  bring  the  Allies  to  battle  again. 
They  made  no  attempt  to  dispute  the  line  of  the  Elbe,  and  on 
the  1 2th  Napoleon  began  to  transfer  his  army  to  the  right  bank. 
He  believed  that  the  Russians  had  separated  from  the  Prussians, 
and  that  the  latter  were  retreating  on  Berlin,  their  allies  up  the 
Oder  to  Breslau.  Accordingly  he  divided  his  own  forces,  direct¬ 
ing  Ney  with  the  Illrd,  Vth  and  Vllth  Corps  against  Berlin, 
advancing  himself  with  the  Guards,  the  IVth,  Vlth,  Xlth 
and  Xllth  Corps  into  Lusatia. 

But  his  idea  that  the  Allies  had  adopted  divergent  lines  of 
retreat  was  quite  erroneous.  On  the  contrary,  they  had  received 


584  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


considerable  reinforcements,  including  14,000  Russians  under 
Barclay  de  Tolly  and  some  Prussian  reserves,  and  had  taken  up 
a  strong  position  behind  the  Spree  at  Bautzen,  and  were  quite 
prepared  for  battle.  Here  it  was  that  Napoleon  found  them 
when  he  pushed  forward  into  Lusatia,  expecting  to  drive  the 
Russians  before  him.  As  soon  as  he  discovered  that  they  meant 
to  give  battle,  he  sent  orders  to  Ney  to  change  his  route  and  to 
come  back  to  the  aid  of  the  main  body,  directing  him  to  move 
on  Drehsa  in  the  right  rear  of  the  Allies’  position  in  order  to 
outflank  them,  cut  them  off  from  Silesia,  and  compel  them  to 
retreat,  not  on  Breslau  but  against  the  Bohemian  frontier.  Ney 
received  these  orders  at  Hoyerswerda  on  the  19th  of  May,  on 
which  day  the  rest  of  the  army  was  assembled  to  the  West  of 
Bautzen. 

The  position  of  the  Allies  was  one  of  some  strength :  they 
were  drawn  up  on  the  heights  behind  the  Spree,  their  right — 
Barclay’s  Russians — thrown  back  from  Plieskowitz  to  Gleina, 
where  it  rested  on  the  Blosa,  an  affluent  of  the  Spree.  Bliicher’s 
corps  formed  the  right  centre,  Yorck  being  on  his  left,  the  main 
body  of  the  Russians  beyond  that.  Somewhat  in  front  of  the 
main  line  were  Kleist’s  Prussians  at  Burk,  and  Miloradovitch’s 
Russians  in  and  to  the  left  of  Bautzen  itself.  This  was  a  strong 
position,  but  it  had  the  grave  defects  of  being  intersected  by  the 
narrow  valley  of  the  Blosa  and  of  being  rather  too  long  for  the 
numbers  available.  Moreover,  the  Allies  were  seriously  handi¬ 
capped  by  the  want  of  a  proper  commander-in-chief ;  Witt¬ 
genstein’s  control  over  their  operations  was  little  more  than 
nominal,  for  Alexander  had  practically  taken  the  direction  of 
affairs  out  of  his  hands,  and  the  Czar  had  no  pretensions  to 
match  himself  against  Napoleon. 

Wishing  to  deceive  the  Allies  into  the  belief  that  he  was 
aiming  rather  at  turning  their  left  flank  than  their  right,  and  at 
cutting  them  off  not  from  Silesia  but  from  Bohemia,  Napoleon 
began  his  attack  on  the  20th  with  Oudinot’s  corps,  which  formed 
his  extreme  right.  Oudinot  crossed  the  Spree  at  Grubschiitz 
and  forced  the  Russians  back  with  some  success,  while  Macdonald 
and  Marmont  advanced  against  Bautzen  and  the  IVth  Corps 
assailed  Kleist’s  position.  The  fighting  was  well  contested,  but 
at  length  a  division  of  Marmont’s  corps  (VI.)  carried  Bautzen,  and 
by  outflanking  Kleist  forced  him  also  to  retire  from  the  heights 
of  Burk  to  the  second  line.  Oudinot  on  the  right  had  been 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 


535 


1813] 

checked,  but  the  result  of  the  day’s  fighting  was  on  the  whole 
favourable  to  the  French.  Ney  had  hardly  been  engaged :  he 
had  had  some  sharp  fighting  on  the  19th  at  Konigswartha 
against  Barclay  who  had  been  pushed  out  thither  to  check  him  ; 
but  though  the  Allies  gained  some  successes  at  first,  Ney  had 
in  the  end  forced  them  back  behind  the  Spree.  On  the  evening 
of  the  20th  his  leading  brigade  reached  the  left  bank  of  the  Spree 
at  Klix. 

Next  morning  (May  21st)  the  Emperor  decided  to  defer  the 
serious  frontal  attack  until  Ney’s  turning  movement  had 
developed  sufficiently  to  really  threaten  the  Allied  retreat ;  but 
that  Marshal,  after  forcing  Barclay  back  from  Malschwitz  to 
Preititz  by  10  a.m.,  forbore  to  push  forward,  partly  because  he 
misinterpreted  Napoleon’s  order  to  be  in  Preititz  by  1 1  o’clock 
into  a  command  not  to  be  beyond  Preititz  at  that  hour,  partly 
because  he  thought  he  had  the  Russian  Guards  in  front  of  him, 
though  they  were  in  reality  already  engaged  with  the  French 
centre  round  Baschiitz.  As  soon  as  the  sound  of  Ney’s  guns 
had  told  the  Emperor  that  the  turning  movement  had  really 
begun  he  had  committed  his  troops  to  the  frontal  attack.  On 
the  Allied  left  St.  Priest’s  Russians  had  some  success  against 
Oudinot,  but  the  advance  of  the  IVth  Corps  by  Nieder  Gurick 
and  of  the  Vlth  on  Basankwitz  compelled  Blucher  and  Yorck, 
who  came  to  his  help,  to  fall  back  from  Kreckwitz  behind  the 
Blosa.  Had  Ney  been  as  far  forward  as  Napoleon  hoped  he 
would  be,  the  Prussians  would  probably  have  found  it  impossible 
to  extricate  themselves ;  but  Kleist  had  managed  to  regain 
Preititz,  and  though  thrust  from  it  when  Reynier’s  Saxons  and 
Lauriston  reinforced  Ney,  he  so  far  delayed  the  turning  move¬ 
ment  that  the  Allies  were  able  to  escape  from  the  net  Napoleon 
had  cast  for  them.  But  with  their  right  driven  in,  their  retreat 
endangered,  and  Macdonald  and  Oudinot  pressing  hard  upon 
St.  Priest  and  the  Russian  Guards,  they  had  no  alternative  but 
to  go  back  all  along  their  line.  By  abandoning  the  contest 
before  they  had  really  been  defeated,  and  by  using  their 
numerous  cavalry  to  protect  their  retirement,  they  got  away  in 
good  order,  leaving  but  few  prisoners  and  hardly  any  guns 
behind.  It  was  then  that  Napoleon  felt  most  bitterly  the  want 
of  the  squadrons  he  found  it  so  hard  to  create  out  of  his  new  con¬ 
scripts  and  his  untrained  horses.  If  he  could  have  overwhelmed 
the  Allied  cavalry,  their  retreat  might  have  been  changed  into  a 


586  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


disastrous  rout,  and  Bautzen  might  have  ranked  with  Austerlitz 
and  Marengo.  As  it  was,  the  Allies  retired  in  good  order  by 
Bunzlau  to  Liegnitz  and  by  Lowenberg  on  Goldberg,  thence 
turning  Southward  to  Schweidnitz. 

The  reason  of  the  Allies  for  turning  away  from  the  Oder  and 
placing  themselves  in  the  triangle  formed  by  Glatz,  Neisse  and 
Schweidnitz,  were,  in  the  first  place,  that  they  wished  to  keep 
touch  with  Austria  in  case  that  Power  should,  as  they  fervently 
desired,  throw  in  her  lot  with  them ;  secondly,  that  a  retreat 
behind  the  Oder,  the  only  other  alternative,  would  have  been  an 
enormous  incentive  to  Napoleon.  Had  the  Allies  given  so  clear 
a  proof  of  their  discouragement,  he  would  hardly  have  made  the 
fatal  blunder  of  an  armistice.  But  the  decision  was  taken  in 
opposition  to  the  wishes  of  the  Russian  generals,  especially  of 
Barclay,  who  had  succeeded  to  the  command  which  Wittgenstein 
laid  down  in  disgust. 

The  Allied  army,  indeed,  was  in  no  condition  for  another 
action.  Their  losses  at  Bautzen  had  been  lower  than  those  of 
the  French,  who  must  have  had  at  least  18,000  casualties,1  but 
still  the  two  defeats  had  shaken  their  morale  considerably, 
especially  that  of  the  Russians,  and  had  produced  a  good  deal 
of  friction  between  the  Allies.  Directly  after  Bautzen  Barclay 
declared  that  the  condition  of  his  army  was  such  that  it  was 
imperative  for  him  to  retire  behind  the  Oder  to  recruit  and 
refresh  his  men  ;  and  indeed  their  numbers,  equipment,  discipline 
and  general  tone  did  leave  a  good  deal  to  be  desired.2  But  the 
Prussians  were  aghast  at  so  fatal  a  proposal.  To  abandon  to 
Napoleon  so  fertile  and  productive  a  district  as  Silesia  would 
be  most  harmful.  Their  troops  were  in  rather  better  condition 
than  were  the  Russians  :  recruits  were  coming  in  freely,  and  they 
felt,  not  without  good  reason,  that  so  retrograde  a  movement 
would  be  the  beginning  of  the  end.  It  would  perhaps  bring 
Barclay’s  weakened  forces  nearer  the  reinforcements  they  so 
badly  needed,  but  it  would  deliver  the  greater  part  of  Prussia 
over  to  Napoleon,  would  as  much  discourage  the  national  move¬ 
ment  in  the  parts  of  Germany  still  under  his  rule  as  it  would 
encourage  his  troops  and  confirm  in  their  allegiance  to  his  cause 
those  who  were  wavering.  Moreover,  it  would  greatly  increase 
the  difficulties  of  co-operating  with  Austria  if  Francis  II.  should 
be  induced  to  declare  against  Napoleon.3 

1  Cf.  Rousset,  p.  96.  2  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  3.  3  Ibid.  i.  2. 


LUTZEN.  May2-ji8l3. 


To  Leipzig 


ENGLISH  MILES 


Ney's  position  AM. 


^Eisdorf 

siedel  ~  eSrS&Sn 

traJL  O  Gross  Eugene  of 

&gr  C?  #0 S °-^ ^3 ^ 3  Gorschen  I Yuntemberg 

<2»  S'1'5*’ 

Winzingerooe 


BAUTZEN  May20‘-&2I?I8I3. 


SX£Da«*<ki  ®iUv«, 


i8i3] 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 


587 


The  divergence  between  the  views  of  the  Allies  might  have 
had  serious  consequences,  indeed  the  Russians  were  within 
measurable  distance  of  separating  from  the  Prussians  when  the 
intervention  of  Austria  resulted  in  the  Armistice  of  Poischwitz.1 
Austria’s  action  at  this  critical  moment  was  of  the  utmost 
importance.  Metternich  may  not  have  been  a  man  of  high 
principle,  his  policy  and  aims  may  have  been  reactionary,  illiberal 
and  opportunist,  but  he  handled  the  diplomatic  situation  with 
great  acuteness  and  skill.  He  saw  that  were  Austria  now  to 
assist  Napoleon  to  make  good  his  threatened  predominance  in 
Europe,  she  would  merely  rivet  the  chains  more  firmly  on  her 
own  neck  ;  but  he  was  determined  to  avoid  encouraging  the 
popular  movement  in  Germany,  and  he  desired  as  little  change 
in  the  existing  territorial  arrangements  as  might  prove  com¬ 
patible  with  the  secure  independence  of  Austria  and  the  restora¬ 
tion  to  the  Hapsburgs  of  at  any  rate  the  provinces  they  had  lost 
in  1809.  Further,  knowing  as  he  did  the  state  of  the  Austrian 
finances  and  of  the  Austrian  army,  he  was  anxious  to  avoid 
having  recourse  to  arms  if  he  could  possibly  gain  his  ends  by 
any  other  means.  He  was  therefore  well  pleased  when  the 
mission  of  Stadion  to  the  headquarters  of  the  Allies  and  of 
Bubna  to  Napoleon’s  camp  resulted,  despite  all  Napoleon’s 
bluster  and  threats,  in  the  conclusion  of  an  armistice  (June  4th). 
At  the  moment  Napoleon’s  headquarters  were  at  Neumarkt, 
his  left  wing  was  nearing  Breslau,  his  right  close  to  Schweidnitz, 
the  Allies  being  concentrated  between  Strehlen  and  Nimptsch. 
Oudinot,  after  one  success  against  the  Prussian  force  covering 
Berlin  at  Hoyerswerda  (May  28th),  had  been  repulsed  when  he 
again  attacked  Billow  at  Liickau  (June  4th),  and  had  fallen  back 
to  the  Black  Elster.  Victor  had  relieved  Glogau,  and  Davout  had 
reoccupied  Hamburg  and  got  into  touch  with  the  Danes.  The 
line  of  demarcation,  therefore,  which  was  now  arranged  had  to 
correspond  to  this  situation.  Leaving  Hamburg  and  Liibeck 
in  French  hands,  it  ran  up  the  Elbe  to  Magdeburg,  thence 
followed  the  frontier  between  Saxony  and  Prussia  to  the  Oder, 
which  it  reached  at  Miillrose.  From  there  it  ascended  the  Oder 
to  the  Katzbach,  where  it  divided,  the  French  having  to  keep 
behind  the  Katzbach,  the  Allies  behind  the  Striegau  Wasser, 
the  intervening  space  being  declared  neutral.  During  the  sus¬ 
pension  of  hostilities,  beleaguered  fortresses  might  be  supplied 

1  Cf.  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1806-1S71 ,  i.  348. 


588  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


from  outside  but  must  not  increase  their  stock  of  provisions,  and 
no  troops  were  to  cross  the  lines  of  demarcation.  This  last  pro¬ 
vision  was  none  too  well  observed  by  some  of  the  irregulars 
attached  to  the  Prussian  army,  notably  the  well-known  Free 
Corps  under  Liitzow,  which  after  raiding  Erfurt  and  the  Saxon 
Duchies  was  brought  to  action  by  Arrighi’s  cavalry  at  Kitzen 
near  Leipzig  and  destroyed  (June  17th). 

In  agreeing  to  this  armistice,  Napoleon  played  into  the  hands 
of  his  enemies.  Military  and  political  considerations  alike  should 
have  induced  him  to  reject  the  proposals.  Liitzen  and  Bautzen 
had  cost  him  dear,  and  the  exertions  his  young  soldiers  had 
made  had  nearly  exhausted  them  ;  but  for  all  that  the  campaign 
had  so  far  gone  in  his  favour,  the  Allies  could  hardly  have 
hoped  to  avert  defeat  in  another  battle,  and  it  was  at  least  doubt¬ 
ful  whether  the  Russo-Prussian  alliance  would  survive  another 
defeat.  Even  if  the  Allies  remained  true  to  their  alliance,  great 
military  advantages  might  have  been  gained  by  pushing  forward 
to  the  Lower  and  Middle  Oder ;  beleaguered  fortresses  might 
have  been  relieved,  and  the  veterans  who  formed  their  garrisons 
would  have  been  a  welcome  stiffening  to  Napoleon’s  young  con¬ 
scripts.  Moreover,  to  accept  an  armistice  would  publish  to  the 
world  the  fact  that  all  was  not  well  with  the  Emperor’s  position ; 
why  otherwise  should  he  halt  in  a  career  of  victory  ?  Austria 
and  other  waverers  were  more  likely  to  rally  to  his  cause 
if  he  showed  himself  confident  of  victory,  than  if  he  confessed 
himself  unable  to  follow  up  the  advantages  he  had  secured. 

But  the  campaign  in  Saxony  had  shown  Napoleon  some 
weak  points  in  his  armour,  above  all  his  want  of  cavalry,  and  he 
was  in  sore  need  of  time  in  which  to  supply  his  deficiencies  in 
that  arm.  Moreover,  his  raw  troops  were  hardly  fit  for  another 
desperate  struggle  like  that  of  Bautzen.  Munitions  and  supplies 
were  nearly  exhausted,  his  communications  with  the  Rhine  and 
with  France  were  being  harassed  by  the  Free  Corps,  which  were 
playing  the  part  which  Spanish  guerillas  and  Portuguese  militia 
had  played  in  the  Peninsula,  his  men  were  worn  out  and  in  bad 
need  of  rest.  But  the  Emperor  failed  to  see  that  useful  as  delay 
would  be  to  him,  the  respite  which  the  armistice  would  give 
might  be  turned  to  even  better  use  by  the  Allies,  that  their  need 
of  a  breathing  space  in  which  to  refresh  and  reorganise  their 
forces  was  even  greater  than  his ;  that  their  resources  if  more 
distant  were  larger.  Yet,  though  it  was  largely  because  he 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 


589 


J  813] 

wanted  time  in  which  to  refit  and  increase  his  forces  that  he 
concluded  the  armistice,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  fear  of 
Austrian  invention  was  also  most  influential  with  him.  The 
retreat  of  the  Allies  towards  the  Austrian  frontier  seemed  to 
point  to  an  understanding  between  them  and  the  government  at 
Vienna,  and  at  the  moment  the  Emperor  was  not  inclined  to 
face  the  Austrians  as  well  as  the  Russians  and  Prussians.  It 
was  mainly  the  great  strategic  advantage  of  their  position  in 
Bohemia  which  made  the  Austrians  so  formidable  :  posted  across 
his  flank,  they  could  sever  his  communications  with  France  by  a 
move  down  the  Elbe.  To  neutralise  this  Napoleon  was  relying 
on  the  demonstration  which  the  Army  of  Italy  was  to  make 
against  Carniola,  and  at  the  end  of  May  the  Army  of  Italy  was 
only  just  beginning  to  take  shape  under  Eugene. 

In  his  appreciation  of  the  political  situation,  Napoleon  was 
even  more  at  fault ;  if  it  was  a  serious  blunder  to  have  accepted 
the  armistice,  it  was  an  even  graver  error  not  to  have  accepted 
the  very  favourable  terms  Austria  suggested.  But  just  as  he 
could  not  believe  that  he  could  fail  to  overthrow  the  Allies,  even 
if  Austria  threw  in  her  lot  with  Russia  and  Prussia,  so,  too,  he 
seems  to  have  failed  to  grasp  the  policy  of  Metternich,  and  to 
have  relied  too  much  on  the  influence  of  his  marriage  to  Marie 
Louise,1  almost  expecting  it  to  blind  Austria  to  her  own  interests  : 
he  never  imagined  that  a  judicious  mixture  of  threats  and  bribes 
would  fail  to  bring  Austria  to  heel. 

But  Metternich  gauged  the  situation  too  acutely  to  be 
caught  by  the  bait  of  Illyria  and  Silesia  and  the  redistribution 
of  Germany  to  the  disadvantage  of  Prussia.  Napoleon’s  word 
was  but  a  poor  security  for  the  punctual  performance  of  the 
promises  made  to  Austria  in  his  hour  of  need :  once  he  had 
overthrown  the  renascent  power  of  Prussia  and  hurled  Russia 
back  behind  the  Niemen  by  Austrian  aid,  the  Hapsburgs  might 
wait  in  vain  for  their  wages.  Much  as  Metternich  disliked 
Prussia,  he  was  not  prepared  to  indulge  his  hatred  of  the 
Hohenzollern  at  the  heavy  price  of  re-establishing  Napoleon’s 
supremacy  over  Europe :  he  preferred  maintaining  a  balance  of 
power  by  helping  Prussia  to  regain  her  old  position  to  receiving 
even  Silesia  as  the  vassal  of  Napoleon.  The  only  effect  of 
Napoleon’s  victories  was,  therefore,  to  convince  Metternich  that 
Austria  must  draw  nearer  the  Allies  lest  Alexander  should  lose 

1  Cf.  EHR ,  1887,  P-  39  n 


590  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


heart  and  accept  the  overtures  which  Napoleon  was  making  to 
him  through  Caulaincourt.  By  the  time  the  Congress  of  Prague 
was  arranged  Mctternich  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
only  course  open  to  Austria  was  to  take  arms  against  Napoleon  ; 
and  he  seems  to  have  welcomed  the  Congress,  because  he  expected 
that  it  would  convince  Francis  II  that  no  other  solution  was 
possible.  Francis  was  more  inclined  to  cling  to  peace,  more 
anxious  to  build  a  golden  bridge  across  which  Napoleon  could 
retire  without  any  humiliation  to  his  pride ;  but  Metternich 
was  able  to  bring  the  Emperor  round  to  his  own  views,  and  to 
induce  him  to  agree  to  the  convention  which  was  the  result  of  the 
negotiations  with  the  Czar  on  which  Metternich  now  embarked. 
This  convention,  signed  at  Reichenbach  on  June  27th,  laid  down 
certain  indispensable  conditions  upon  which  Austria  would  insist 
as  the  basis  of  her  mediation.  They  were  the  abolition  of  the 
Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw  and  its  partition  between  its  three 
former  owners,  the  liberation  of  the  Hanseatic  towns  and  of  the 
rest  of  the  German  coast-lands  seized  in  1810,  the  restoration  of 
Illyria  to  Austria,  and  the  evacuation  by  the  French  of  the  Polish 
and  Prussian  fortresses  still  in  their  hands.  If  by  July  21st 
Napoleon  should  not  have  accepted  these  terms,  Austria  pledged 
herself  to  join  the  Allies  and  declare  war  against  the  Emperor 
of  the  French.1 

The  first  result  of  Austria’s  interposition  was  that  Napoleon, 
after  vainly  attempting  to  bully  Metternich  into  submission, 
agreed  (June  30th)  to  accept  her  mediation  and  that  a  Peace 
Congress  should  forthwith  be  held  at  Prague.  To  allow  time 
for  the  deliberations  of  this  Congress,  it  was  agreed  that  the 
armistice  should  be  extended  to  August  10th. 

The  negotiations  of  the  Peace  Congress,  which  duly  met  at 
Prague  on  July  10th,  were  felt  from  the  first  to  be  a  mere  form  : 
Napoleon  showed  no  indication  of  intending  to  treat  them 
seriously,  and,  indeed,  he  was  far  more  occupied  with  preparing 
his  forces  for  the  great  campaign  which  was  to  humble  Austria 
as  well  as  Russia  and  Prussia.  Similarly,  on  the  side  of  the 
Allies  it  is  the  discussion  of  the  plans  for  the  coming  operations 
which  are  of  real  interest  and  importance. 

In  these  discussions  a  prominent  part  was  played  by 
Bernadotte.  Greatly  to  Napoleon’s  disgust  his  former  Marshal, 
who  had  been  chosen  as  Crown  Prince  of  Sweden  in  1810  and 

1  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  30. 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 


59i 


1813] 

had  at  first  applied  the  Continental  System  most  rigorously,  had 
not  remained  true  to  the  French  alliance.  By  no  means  a 
devoted  adherent  of  Napoleon,  and  anxious  above  all  things  to 
identify  himself  with  his  adopted  country,  Bernadotte  had 
not  hesitated  to  relax  the  Continental  System  when  he  found 
what  disastrous  effects  it  was  having  on  Sweden.  Infuriated 
by  this,  Napoleon  had  (Feb.  1812)  reoccupied  Swedish 
Pomerania,  which  had  only  been  restored  to  Sweden  in  1810. 
Thereupon  Bernadotte  concluded  the  Peace  of  Abo  with  Russia 
(April  1812)  and  bestirred  himself  to  reconcile  the  Czar  with 
Great  Britain.  He  had  followed  up  his  success  in  this  diplomatic 
endeavour  by  concluding  treaties  with  England  (March  3rd, 
1813)  and  Prussia  (April  22nd),  pledging  him  to  hostility  to 
Napoleon  ;  but  his  demand  that  Sweden  should  be  indemni¬ 
fied  with  Norway  for  the  loss  of  Finland  to  Russia  had  caused 
a  hitch  in  his  negotiations  with  that  Power  and  with  Prussia. 
His  proposal  to  compensate  Denmark  with  the  Hanseatic  towns 
and  other  parts  of  North  Germany  had  not  unnaturally  been 
disliked  by  Prussia,  and  Frederick  William  had  at  first  refused 
to  ratify  the  treaty  of  April  22nd.  However,  Liitzen  and 
Bautzen  forced  the  Czar  and  Frederick  William  to  change  their 
tone  and  to  fall  in  with  Bernadotte’s  proposals.  It  was  agreed  that 
35,000  Russians  and  27,000  Prussians  should  be  put  under  his 
orders  and  should  join  the  18,000  Swedes  with  whom  he  landed 
at  Stralsund  on  May  24th.  This,  of  course,  decided  the  action 
of  Denmark,  which  promptly  threw  in  her  lot  with  Napoleon’s, 
concluding  a  treaty  (July  10th)  of  no  small  influence  on  the 
fortunes  of  Germany,  as  it  removed  all  possibility  of  the  creation 
of  a  strong  Danish  state  on  the  Lower  Elbe.1  The  assistance 
of  some  12,000  Danes,  who  joined  Davout  at  Hamburg,  went 
far  to  secure  that  important  position,  the  extreme  left  of  the 
line  Napoleon  was  now  taking  up  on  the  Elbe. 

Meanwhile  the  utmost  efforts  were  being  made  on  all  sides 
to  put  into  the  field  every  available  man.  Napoleon’s  officers 
had  to  teach  their  recruits  the  elements  of  drill  and  discipline 
as  they  marched  across  Germany  to  the  Elbe.  From  the 
interior  of  Russia  large  reinforcements  were  slowly  pushing 
Westward.  In  June  England  concluded  subsidy  treaties  with 
Russia  and  Prussia,  agreeing  to  pay  them  respectively  over 
a  million  and  half  a  million  sterling.  Munitions,  too,  were 

1  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  pp.  11-18. 


592  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


shipped  in  considerable  quantities  to  Stralsund  and  Colberg, 
and,  thanks  largely  to  this  source  of  supply,  it  was  found  possible 
to  equip  the  Landwehr  for  field  service.  Muskets  were  served 
out  to  them  instead  of  the  pikes  with  which  so  many  of  them 
had  till  then  been  armed ;  they  were  formed  into  battalions  and 
squadrons,  and  were  now  brigaded  with  the  older  troops,  whose 
depleted  ranks  had  again  been  brought  up  to  full  strength  by 
vigorous  recruiting. 

At  the  same  time  the  arrangement  of  a  plan  of  campaign 
was  being  steadily  pushed  forward.  Long  before  the  Peace 
Congress  had  begun  to  display  its  futility  by  meeting,  Austrian 
generals  had  been  framing  schemes  in  consultation  with  the 
Allies.  The  eagerness  with  which  this  was  being  done  was 
itself  a  proof  that  no  one  regarded  the  chances  of  a  pacific 
settlement  as  worth  considering.  Still  none  of  the  plans  gave 
universal  satisfaction,  and  the  want  of  a  Commander-in-Chief 
was  badly  felt.  Scharnhorst  had  been  badly  wounded  at  Liitzen, 
but  despite  his  wound  he  had  gone  to  Prague  to  consult  with 
the  Austrians.  However,  he  became  suddenly  worse,  and  died  on 
June  28th,  not  having  lived  to  see  Prussia  reap  the  harvest  of 
vengeance  on  Napoleon  which  his  hard  work  had  sowed.  His 
death  left  von  Knesebeck  as  Prussia’s  principal  representative  in 
the  councils  of  the  Allies,  Toll  and  Barclay  being  Russia’s 
spokesmen,  Schwarzenberg  and  his  able  Chief  of  Staff,  Joseph 
Radetzky,  Austria’s.  Into  the  details  of  the  various  schemes 
it  is  impossible  to  go ; 1  they  illustrate  the  divergent  interests 
and  points  of  view  inevitable  in  a  coalition,  but  at  length  the 
Russian  and  Prussian  headquarters  decided  on  a  plan  by 
which  three  armies  were  to  be  formed,  one  in  the  Mark  of 
Brandenburg  under  Bernadotte  to  cover  Berlin,  one  in  Silesia 
under  a  Prussian  commander,  which  would  serve  to  maintain 
the  communications  of  the  main  army  in  Bohemia  with  Russia 
by  way  of  Poland.  This  main  army  was  to  be  formed  by  the 
union  of  the  greater  part  of  the  Russo-Prussian  forces  near 
Schweidnitz  with  the  Austrians.  Submitted  to  the  Austrians, 
the  idea  met  on  the  whole  with  their  approval ;  but  they  pro¬ 
posed  that  the  main  army  should  adopt  a  defensive  attitude, 
leaving  the  initiative  to  Napoleon,  and  that  the  Swedo-Russian 
Army  of  the  North,  with  the  aid  of  Billow’s  corps,  should  alone 
on  the  Allied  side  take  the  offensive.2 

1  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  71-86.  2  Ibid.  i.  87-SS. 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  I 


593 


1813] 

However,  Bernadotte’s  assent  had  to  be  obtained,  and  he  had 
some  time  before  this  been  pressing  for  a  personal  interview 
with  the  Allied  monarchs  as  the  only  possible  means  of  reach¬ 
ing  any  satisfactory  decision :  this  meeting  now  took  place,  the 
Czar,  Frederick  William  and  the  Crown  Prince  of  Sweden 
coming  together  at  the  Castle  of  Trachenberg  near  Breslau 
(July  9th).  A  conference  of  some  three  days  resulted  in  the 
adoption  of  the  plan  of  campaign  generally  known  as  the 
Compact  of  Trachenberg,  a  plan  which  on  the  whole  followed 
the  lines  laid  down  by  the  Crown  Prince,  and  which,  having  been 
submitted  to  the  Austrians,  was  by  them  adopted  with  some 
modifications  1  which  Radetzky  suggested.2 

The  keynote  of  the  scheme  of  operations  finally  accepted  by 
the  Allies  was  the  employment  of  a  policy  of  attrition.  Instead 
of  the  combined  offensive  operations  suggested  by  Toll  the 
Allies  were  to  adopt  a  defensive  strategy,  to  refuse  Napoleon 
the  chance  of  fighting  a  pitched  battle  until  marches  and 
counter-marches  against  one  point  after  another  in  the  sur¬ 
rounding  semicircle  of  hostile  armies,  which  always  retired  as 
he  approached,  should  have  so  diminished  his  numbers  and 
worn  out  his  men  as  to  let  the  Allies  attack  them  with  every 
prospect  of  victory.  But  while  a  pitched  battle  with  the  main 
army  of  the  enemy  was  to  be  avoided,  any  isolated  or  detached 
corps  was  to  be  brought  to  action  and  destroyed.  The  three 
armies  which  were  to  be  formed — Bernadotte’s  in  the  North; 
Blucher’s  in  Silesia,  consisting  of  his  own  Prussian  corps  with 
that  of  Yorck  and  the  Russians  of  Langeron  and  Sacken  ;  the  main 
army  in  Bohemia,  which  was  to  be  reinforced  by  the  greater  part 
of  the  Russo-Prussians  from  Schweidnitz — were  all  to  adopt  the 
same  strategy  :  each  was  to  retire  before  Napoleon  if  he  advanced 
against  it,  to  advance  and  threaten  the  French  flanks  and  com¬ 
munications  should  Napoleon  move  against  either  of  the  others. 
Thus,  should  the  Emperor,  as  was  expected,  invade  Bohemia, 
the  main  army  would  draw  back  up  the  Elbe ;  Bernaclotte, 
leaving  20,000  men  to  contain  the  Danes  and  Hamburg,  would 
move  against  the  Middle  Elbe,  aiming  at  Leipzig ;  Bliicher 
and  the  Army  of  Silesia  was  to  push  forward  to  the  Elbe, 
cross  the  river  between  Dresden  and  Torgau,  and  obtain  touch 
with  the  Army  of  the  North.3 

This  strategy  is  one  which  has  been  criticised  as  a  reversion 

1  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  89-92.  2  Ibid .  i.  94-96.  3  Ibid.  i.  96-99, 

38 


594  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


to  the  dilatory  and  over-methodical  operations  of  the  18th 
Century ;  as  a  failure  to  appreciate  or  to  practise  the  cardinal 
principle  of  strategy  of  which  Napoleon  had  been  so  brilliant 
an  exponent,  the  principle  of  concentrating  all  available  forces 
against  the  enemy’s  main  force  to  decide  the  issue  once  and  for 
all  by  a  pitched  battle.1  Pertinent  as  this  criticism  is,  it  is  never¬ 
theless  one-sided  :  the  strategy  of  the  Allies  had  as  its  ultimate 
objective  a  pitched  battle;  they  wanted  to  make  Napoleon  do 
their  work  for  them  by  wearing  out  his  young  troops  through  con¬ 
stant  but  fruitless  exertions,  to  refuse  him  the  chance  of  a  general 
action  would  exasperate  and  annoy  him,  and  in  the  end,  when  the 
work  of  attrition  had  been  done,  the  offensive  would  be  taken. 

Meanwhile  about  the  time  of  the  conference  at  Trachenberg 
good  news  had  reached  the  Allied  Headquarters.  Napoleon’s 
efforts  to  conceal  or  minimise  the  tidings  from  Spain  had  been 
unsuccessful,  and  the  letter  of  Francis  II  to  Bernadotte  of  July 
9th 2  is  only  one  of  many  instances  of  the  encouraging  effect  of 
the  news  of  Vittoria.  Wellington’s  great  victory  (June  21st)  was 
a  battle  of  far  more  than  local  importance ;  it  was  not  merely 
that  the  French  had  been  driven  headlong  out  of  the  Peninsula, 
and  that  the  “  intrusive  King  ”  had  looked  for  the  last  time  on 
his  Spanish  dominions.  Any  lingering  doubts  in  Austria’s 
mind  were  now  dispelled.  The  Allies  already  seemed  to  see 
Germany  delivered  from  Napoleon’s  rule  as  Spain  had  been. 
The  Czar  ordered  the  performance  of  the  first  Te  Deum  that 
the  Russian  Court  had  sung  for  a  victory  gained  by  other  than 
Russian  troops.3  Moreover,  now  that  France  was  threatened 
with  invasion  not  another  man  could  be  withdrawn  from  the 
Bidassoa  to  the  Elbe,  and  Napoleon  had  to  send  Soult,  the 
Marshal  most  capable  of  exercising  an  independent  command, 
to  try  to  restore  affairs  in  the  Peninsula  :  not  many  days  were 
to  pass  before  he  would  feel  his  absence  from  Saxony. 

By  this  time  the  end  of  the  armistice  was  close  at  hand, 
and  the  deliberations  at  Prague  had  produced  no  tangible 
result.  Austria  asked  more  than  Napoleon  would  give,  and 
neither  side  would  give  way,  for  each  expected  success  as  the 
result  of  an  appeal  to  the  sword.  Thus  the  time  limit  was 
reached  and  passed.  On  August  11th  the  Prussians  from 
Silesia  set  foot  as  allies  on  Bohemian  soil,  and  next  day  Austria 
published  her  declaration  of  war. 

1  Cf-.  Friedrich,  i.  99.  ‘  Cf.  Rose,  ii.  321.  3  Ibid. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION— TO  THE  BATTLE 

OF  KULM 

THE  good  use  which  Napoleon  had  made  of  the  armistice 
may  best  be  estimated  from  the  fact  that  at  its  con¬ 
clusion  the  forces  under  his  command  on  German  soil  alone 
amounted  to  nearly  600,000  men,  a  total  hardly  inferior  to  that 
of  the  great  host  collected  sixteen  months  before  for  the 
invasion  of  Russia.  Not  that  all  these  were  available  for  active 
operations  in  the  field.  The  fortresses  to  the  Eastward  still 
holding  out  for  the  Emperor  absorbed  50,000  men,  survivors 
for  the  most  part  of  the  Grand  Army  of  1812;  another  25,000 
garrisoned  the  fortresses  along  the  Elbe,  and  about  the  same 
number  maintained  the  line  of  communications  with  France 
through  Erfurt  and  Wurzburg.  P'ar  away  on  the  Emperor’s 
left  Davout  at  Hamburg  had  some  40,000,  12,000  of  whom  were 
Danes,  ready  for  field  operations.  In  like  manner  on  the 
extreme  right  Wrede’s  Bavarian  corps,  25,000  strong,  watched 
the  Austrians  under  Count  Reuss  on  the  Danube.  Two 
incomplete  corps,  one  of  cavalry  under  Milhaud,  one  of  infantry 
under  Augereau,  which  were  being  formed  at  Mayence  and 
Wurzburg,  amounted  to  15,000  more.  But  when  all  these 
deductions  had  been  made  there  remained  400,000  available 
for  the  main  operations  which  the  Emperor  intended  to  conduct 
himself.  He  was  well  provided  with  artillery,  having  over 
12,000  guns,  and  on  paper  he  had  made  good  his  dangerous 
weakness  in  cavalry,  having  brought  together  380  squadrons  or, 
about  70,000  sabres.  Even  so,  however,  he  was  much  out¬ 
numbered  in  this  arm  by  the  Allies,  and  the  difficulty  of  im¬ 
proving  cavalry  was  to  be  emphasised  on  many  occasions  by 
the  indifferent  work  and  conduct  of  these  hastily  raised 
squadrons.  This  main  body  of  the  Emperor’s  forces  com¬ 
prised  the  Guard,  the  kernel  of  the  whole  army,  60,000  strong, 
five  corps  of  cavalry  and  eleven  of  infantry  together  with 


596  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


independent  divisions  at  Magdeburg,  to  keep  open  the  com¬ 
munications  with  Davout,  and  at  Leipzig. 

But  this  great  force  was  by  no  means  entirely  composed  of 
Frenchmen.  One  corps,  the  VUIth,  was  exclusively  composed 
of  Poles;  five  infantry  divisions  and  some  odd  battalions  were  pro¬ 
vided  by  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  the  Kingdom  of  Italy 
supplied  one  whole  division  and  parts  of  others.  Naples  was 
represented  by  a  brigade,  while  among  the  troops  nominally 
French  were  Dutch,  Belgians,  Swiss,  Germans  from  the  Rhine- 
lands  and  the  shores  of  the  North  Sea,  and  many  Italians.1 
Thus,  as  in  1809,  it  was  with  an  army  which  included  no  small 
number  of  Germans  that  Napoleon  prepared  to  reassert  his 
claims  to  dominate  Germany:  much  would  depend  on  the 
loyalty  of  his  German  vassals  to  him  and  of  their  subjects  to 
them.  Would  the  sentiment  of  German  unity  and  nationality 
be  strong  enough  to  overpower  the  bonds  of  military  discipline 
and,  local  patriotism,  if  Napoleon  were  successful?  would 
military  discipline  and  localism  be  strong  enough  to  resist  the 
seductions  of  German  sentiment,  if  fortune  inclined  to  the  side 
of  the  Allies  ?  2 * 4 

But  enormous  as  were  the  French  forces,  the  efforts  of  the 
Allies  had  produced  an  even  larger  total.  Apart  from  their 

1  No  less  than  three  whole  infantry  divisions  usually  described  as  French  came 
from  the  North  Italian  departments  of  the  Empire. 

2  My  principal  authority  for  the  composition  of  Napoleon’s  Army  of  1813  is 

Major  Friedrich’s  valuable  work  on  The  Autumn  Campaign  of  1813,  to  which  I 
shall  have  constant  occasion  to  refer  throughout  this  chapter.  His  appendices 
(III.  V.  VI.  and  VII.)  give  the  details  as  to  the  contingents  provided  by  the 
Confederation  of  the  Rhine.  Out  of  the  502  battalions  of  the  field  army,  65  came 
from  the  Confederation,  Saxony  supplying  19,  Bavaria  15,  Wurtemberg  n, 
Westphalia  and  Hesse  6  apiece,  Baden  4,  Wurzburg  and  the  Saxon  Duchies  2  each. 
In  the  cavalry  the  proportion  was  rather  larger,  a  sixth,  63  squadrons  out  of 
372,  being  German.  Here  again  Saxony  had  the  largest  contingent,  17  squadrons, 
Westphalia  sending  10,  Wurtemberg  8,  Bavaria  and  Berg  6  apiece,  Baden  5,  Hesse 
and  Mecklenburg  4  each,  Anhalt  2,  and  Wurzburg  1.  Sixteen  batteries  of  artillery 
were  also  provided  by  the  Confederation,  and  it  must  be  remembered  that  among 
the  garrisons  of  the  fortresses  there  was  a  considerable  proportion  of  German  troops. 
For  example,  Dresden  was  held  by  5  Westphalian  battalions  and  some  Saxon 
garrison  artillery  (p.  450).  Unfortunately,  Major  Friedrich  does  not  give  the 
composition  of  the  garrisons,  nor  is  this  to  be  found  in  M.  Camille  Rousset’s  La 
Grande  Armde  de  1813  (Paris),  to  which  I  have  referred  for  the  statistics  about  the 
corps  of  Augereau  (IX.)  and  Davoftt  (XIII.).  The  former’s  23  battalions  included 

4  belonging  to  the  113th  of  the  Line,  a  regiment  raised  at  Genoa  ;  the  rest  of  the  corps 
and  all  Davofit’s  28  battalions  were  Frenchmen.  As  a  rough  estimate,  a  seventh  of 
Napoleon’s  army  may  be  said  to  have  been  Germans. 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  II— TO  KULM  597 


three  main  armies,  those  of  Bohemia,  Silesia,  and  the  North,  there 
were  the  miscellaneous  levies  which  Wallmoden  was  opposing 
to  Davout ; 1  there  were  the  troops,  mainly  Landwehr ,  occupied 
in  blockading  the  fortresses  in  French  hands ;  there  were  the 
Free  Corps  and  other  irregular  forces,  detachments  which  would 
probably  not  be  overestimated  at  ioo,ooo.2  Of  the  three  main 
armies  that  of  Bohemia  was  the  largest.  In  addition  to  the 
Austrians,  some  117  squadrons  and  107  battalions,  not  less  than 
125,000  in  all,  it  included  109  squadrons  and  92  battalions  of 
Russians  under  Barclay  de  Tolly,  rather  over  80,000  men;  the 
second  Prussian  Army  Corps  under  Kleist,  44  squadrons  and  41 
battalions  amounting  to  37,000 ;  and  the  7000  men,  8  squadrons 
and  6  battalions,  of  the  Prussian  Guards.  In  accordance  with 
the  scheme  arranged  at  Reichenbach,  these  forces  had  moved 
from  Silesia  into  Bohemia  by  way  of  Glatz  and  Schweidnitz, 
had  crossed  to  the  left  of  the  Elbe  and  joined  the  Austrians 
on  the  Eger  (August  16th)  the  day  before  the  six  days’  grace 
over  and  above  the  armistice  expired. 

Next  in  size  was  Bernadotte’s  Army  of  the  North  in  which 
the  Prussians,  72,000  strong,  outnumbered  the  combined  Russians 
(30,000)  and  Swedes  (23,000).  One  of  the  two  Prussians  corps, 
Tauentzien’s,  29  squadrons  and  48  battalions,  was  almost 
entirely  composed  of  LandweJu ' ;  the  other,  Biilow’s,  42  squadrons 
and  40  battalions,  was  the  most  efficient  portion  of  the  whole 
army,  as  the  Swedes  had  had  little  experience  of  warfare,  and 
over  a  quarter  of  Winzingerode’s  Russians  were  Cossacks,  who 
were  of  little  value  in  battle.  Really  the  Army  of  Silesia,  though 
weaker  by  nearly  20,000  men,  was  a  much  more  efficient  force  ; 
it  included  Yorck’s  Prussian  corps,  48  squadrons  and  43 
battalions,  38,000  strong,  and  the  two  Russian  corps  of  Sacken 
and  Langeron,  which  between  them  amounted  to  67  squadrons 
and  74  battalions,  or  nearly  70,000  men. 

All  told,  the  three  armies  mustered  about  480,000,  roughly 
speaking  a  fifth  again  as  large  as  Napoleon’s  main  body.  But 
against  that  the  Emperor  could  set  the  advantages  of  a  central 
position  and  of  unity  of  command,  considerations  which  went 
far  to  neutralise  his  numerical  inferiority. 


1  Friedrich,  i.  58. 

2  Major  Friedrich  (i.  59)  puts  the  forces  of  the  Allies  not  in  the  first  line  at  the 
gigantic  total  of  350,000 ;  but  this  includes  not  only  reserves,  depots  and  garrisons, 
but  the  Austrian  corps  facing  Eugene  in  Italy  and  Wrede  in  Bavaria. 


598  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 

The  choice  of  a  Commander-in-Chief  had  been  a  matter  of 
great  difficulty  to  the  Allies.  Alexander  would  readily  have 
taken  the  post  himself,  but  his  military  capacities  were  alto¬ 
gether  inadequate  and  Metternich  would  have  opposed  the 
suggestion.  Bernadotte  had  yet  to  earn  the  full  confidence  of 
his  new  allies,  and  Moreau,  who  hurried  over  from  America  to 
place  his  services  at  their  disposal,  had  not  the  necessary 
position  or  authority.  The  Allies  had  indeed  at  their  disposal 
a  general  whose  reputation  stands  at  the  present  day  far  higher 
than  that  of  any  other  possible  candidate,  but  at  that  time 
Archduke  Charles  was  still  under  the  clouds  of  Wagram,  and, 
moreover,  he  was  on  very  bad  terms  with  his  brother  and  with 
Metternich.  Accordingly,  Austria  put  forward  as  her  candidate 
for  the  command  of  the  army  of  Bohemia,  Prince  Schwarzenberg, 
who  had  commanded  the  Austrian  auxiliary  corps  in  the  in¬ 
vasion  of  Russia.  He  was  a  man  of  considerable  military 
experience  and  of  respectable  capacities,  though  of  altogether 
insufficient  calibre  to  be  matched  against  Napoleon.  He  was 
too  cautious,  too  anxious,  too  wanting  in  self  -  confidence, 
decision  and  energy  to  be  a  great  general,  but  the  unfavourable 
verdicts  so  often  passed  upon  him  fail  to  do  justice  to  what  he 
did  accomplish.  He  had  not  merely  to  direct  the  movements 
of  an  enormous  army  and  to  combine  his  operations  with  those 
of  two  other  armies  which  were  practically  independent,  but  he 
was  the  general  of  a  coalition,  and  he  had  at  his  headquarters 
the  three  Allied  monarchs  whose  presence  could  not  fail  to  be 
a  serious  handicap.  Add  to  this  his  many  vigorous  and 
opinionated  colleagues  and  the  multitude  of  counsellors  of  great 
experience,  including  besides  Barclay  de  Tolly  and  Moreau, 
Radetzky,  Toll  and  Jomini,  always  ready  with  the  best  con¬ 
flicting  advice,  and  Schwarzenberg’s  achievements  seem  not  so 
very  poor  after  all.  No  one  would  pretend  that  it  was 
Schwarzenberg’s  strategy  which  was  the  chief  cause  of  Napoleon’s 
overthrow.  Bernadotte  rather  than  the  Austrian  general  was 
the  author  of  the  plan  Schwarzenberg  had  to  carry  out,  and  all 
that  there  is  to  be  urged  on  his  behalf  is  the  rather  negative 
praise  that  no  great  strategical  blunder  is  to  be  laid  to  his 
door ;  his  errors  were  errors  of  omission  not  of  commission,  he 
did  not  do  anything  much  and  therefore  did  little  wrong.  Still 
in  keeping  the  Allies  together,  and  preserving  good  relations 
between  them,  his  tact  and  diplomacy  were  of  the  utmost  value ; 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  II— TO  KULM  559 


it  may  certainly  be  questioned  whether  the  Allies  could  have 
improved  upon  the  choice. 

Still  the  operations  of  the  Allies  lacked  the  accurate  co¬ 
ordination  which  could  only  be  given  by  a  Commander-in-Chief 
of  really  great  capacity  and  authority,  whose  office  was  a  good 
deal  more  than  a  name,  and  who  could  plan  a  campaign  and 
rely  on  having  his  plan  put  into  execution  in  the  manner  he 
intended.  On  the  whole  the  scheme  arranged  at  Trachenberg 
was  faithfully  adhered  to,  but  it  cannot  be  maintained  that  it 
was  by  superior  strategy  that  the  Allies  succeeded  in  ousting 
the  French  from  Germany.  They  owed  their  victory  largely 
to  the  comparatively  indifferent  quality  of  the  French  army, 
especially  of  the  cavalry,  to  whose  inefficiency  may  be  attributed 
the  failure  to  obtain  accurate  information  which  did  so  much  to 
ruin  Napoleon’s  plans,  largely  to  the  errors  and  misfortunes 
of  Napoleon’s  subordinates,  partly  it  must  be  admitted  to 
Napoleon’s  own  errors,1  but  in  great  measure  to  the  waning 
fidelity  of  his  long-suffering  allies  and  vassals.  Austria  had 
given  the  example  of  rejecting  the  Emperor’s  specious  offers, 
it  remained  to  be  seen  whether  Bavaria  and  Saxony  and 
Wiirtemberg  would  do  the  same.  It  was  the  uncertainty  of  the 
political  situation  which  did  so  much  to  paralyse  the  Emperor’s 
movements.  In  1812  he  had  had  little  reason  to  fear  for  his 
communications  with  France,  even  when  he  had  won  the  Pyrrhic 
victory  of  Borodino  in  the  heart  of  Russia.  After  Bautzen  and 
after  Dresden  he  could  not  feel  sure  of  the  far  shorter  line  from 
the  Elbe  to  the  Rhine.  Germany  was  seething  with  disloyalty 
in  his  rear ;  and  though  as  yet  the  states  of  the  Confederation 
were  bound  to  his  cause  by  their  uncertainty  as  to  the  Allies’ 
intentions  towards  them,  individuals  began  to  desert  even  before 
the  tide  of  success  turned  against  the  Emperor.  As  early  as 
August  22nd  the  two  Westphalian  Hussar  regiments  which 
formed  the  cavalry  brigade  of  the  Ilnd  Corps,  Victor’s,  came 
over  to  the  Allies,2  and  at  the  critical  moment  in  the  battle  of 
Leipzig  it  was  the  defection  of  a  Saxon  division  which  secured 
the  French  defeat. 

1  Count  Yorck  von  Wartenburg  in  his  Napoleon  as  a  General  is  very,  but  not 
perhaps  unduly,  severe  in  his  criticisms  on  the  Emperor’s  strategy  in  this  campaign, 
especially  on  his  failure  to  concentrate  his  forces  at  the  decisive  point,  and  his  neglect 
to  strike  at  the  enemy’s  main  army. 

2  Friedrich,  i.  173. 


6oo  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


The  end  of  the  armistice  found  the  greater  part  of  the 
French  army  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Elbe,  in  a  position,  there¬ 
fore,  which  gave  them  the  advantage  of  being  able  to  operate 
on  interior  lines  against  the  converging  forces  of  their  enemies. 
Yet  despite  this  it  did  not  see  Napoleon  putting  his  whole  force 
in  motion  for  one  of  the  bold  offensive  movements  usually  so 
characteristic  of  his  strategy.  Such  a  stroke,  whether  directed 
against  the  Army  of  Silesia  or  against  the  Austrians  in 
Bohemia,  could  only  prove  successful  if  it  resulted  at  once  in 
a  decisive  battle.  Should  the  force  assailed  evade  an  action  by 
retreat,  the  Emperor  would  only  expose  his  flanks  and  rear  to 
the  other  Allied  forces  if  he  allowed  himself  to  be  drawn  into 
a  pursuit,  while  he  could  not  call  on  troops  so  young  and  raw 
as  the  majority  of  his  were  for  the  great  efforts  in  marching  by 
which  alone  a  reluctant  enemy  might  be  compelled  to  stand 
and  fight.  The  adoption  of  the  defensive  was  therefore  the 
policy  which  his  circumstances  made  advisable.  To  await  in 
his  central  position  in  Lusatia  the  advance  of  his  enemies,  until 
one  or  the  other  came  near  enough  to  let  him  dash  at  it,  bring 
it  to  battle,  crush  it,  and  turn  against  the  other,  was  the  strategy 
which  promised  the  best  results.  But  Napoleon  was  impatient ; 
he  longed  to  reassert  his  supremacy  and  encourage  his  young 
troops  by  a  speedy  victory ;  he  could  not  reconcile  himself  to 
the  mere  defensive,  to  accommodating  his  movements  to  those 
of  the  enemy.  And  with  good  reason  he  feared  the  bad  effects 
on  the  fidelity  of  his  allies  and  the  morale  of  his  troops  which 
were  bound  to  result  from  the  spectacle  of  his  inactivity. 
Accordingly,  while  he  took  post  on  the  Elbe  and  in  Lusatia 
with  the  greater  part  of  his  army,  ready  to  parry  any  advance 
of  the  Allies  from  Silesia  or  Bohemia,1  he  decided  to  take  the 
offensive  against  Bernadotte’s  Army  of  the  North,  whose  fight¬ 
ing  capacities  he  somewhat  underestimated. 

His  scheme  was  that  three  corps  of  infantry,  those  of  Bertrand 
(IV.),  Reynier  (VII.)  and  Oudinot  (XII.),  with  Arrighi’s  cavalry, 
should  advance  Northward  on  Berlin,  Davout  co-operating  by  a 
move  Eastward  from  Hamburg  against  Bernadotte’s  communi¬ 
cations  with  Stralsund.  The  defeat  of  Bernadotte  would,  so 
Napoleon  calculated,  secure  his  threatened  hold  on  North 
Germany,  especially  Westphalia,  and  would  also  allow  him  to 
relieve  the  beleaguered  garrisons  of  Ciistrin,  Stettin  and  even 

1  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  116. 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  II— TO  KULM  601 


Dantzic.  By  obtaining  command  of  the  Lower  Oder  the 
French  would  outflank  the  Army  of  Silesia  and  threaten  its 
communications  with  Russia.  However,  by  detaching  70,000 
men  against  Berlin,  Napoleon  seriously  diminished  the  forces 
he  had  available  to  meet  the  combined  advance  of  the  Allies 
from  Bohemia  and  Silesia,  the  foes  from  whom  he  had  most 
to  fear,  and  over  whom  alone  a  decisive  victory  could  be  won.1 
It  might  have  been  wiser,  as  St.  Cyr  and  Marmont  advised,2  to 
be  content  with  holding  Bernadotte  in  check,  and  to  concentrate 
as  large  a  force  as  possible  against  the  main  armies  of  the 
Allies.  At  the  same  time,  in  the  hands  of  Soult  or  Davout  with 
100,000  of  the  better  troops  at  Napoleon’s  disposal,  the  move 
might  have  proved  a  success  ;  but  it  would  have  necessitated  the 
adoption  of  the  strictest  defensive  in  Silesia,  and  as  it  was  the 
Emperor  did  not  choose  the  right  general  or  detach  a  force 
sufficient  either  in  numbers  or  in  quality  to  secure  success. 
Oudinot,  though  a  brave  soldier  and  a  capable  subordinate,  was 
hardly  fitted  for  so  important  an  independent  command, 
and  his  troops,  even  if  Girard’s  divisions  at  Magdeburg  and 
Wittenberg  be  included  in  the  total,  only  mustered  84,000,  while 
the  Army  of  the  North  came  to  half  as  many  again.  Moreover, 
they  were  of  rather  indifferent  quality,  a  mixture  of  nationalities, 
with  hardly  any  good  French  troops  among  them.  A  third  of 
his  infantry  (35  battalions  out  of  106)  and  over  half  his  cavalry 
(35  squadrons  out  of  67)  were  Germans  from  the  Confederation 
of  the  Rhine,  troops  whose  loyalty  to  the  Emperor  would  be 
subjected  to  a  severe  strain ;  another  division  (14  battalions) 
was  drawn  from  the  kingdom  of  Italy  ;  and  three  of  the  four 
“French”  divisions  were  French  in  name  only,  being  recruited 
from  the  Italian  provinces  of  the  Empire;  while  the  remaining 
one,  Durutte’s,  was  mainly  composed  of  “  disciplinary  ”  regiments.3 
Arrighi’s  cavalry  were  mostly  French,  but  even  they  were  of 
little  value,  a  collection  of  single  squadrons  of  different  regiments, 
raw  recruits  indifferently  mounted,  hardly  able  to  perform  the 
simplest  manoeuvres,  and  quite  incompetent  to  conceal  the 
movements  of  their  own  army  or  discover  those  of  their  enemy.4 
Moreover,  to  add  to  Oudinot’s  difficulties,  Davout  had  his  hands 
too  full  with  Wallmoden  to  be  able  to  carry  out  his  proposed 
diversion  against  Bernadotte’s  communications  with  Stralsund. 

1  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  128-130.  2  Ibid.  i.  133— 135. 

3  Ibid.  i.  367.  4  Ibid.  i.  367  ff. 


6o2  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


While  Oudinot  was  collecting  his  forces  for  the  attack  on 
Berlin,  Napoleon  was  by  no  means  inactive.  Acting  upon 
the  mistaken  impression  that  the  force  which  had  moved  from 
Silesia  to  join  the  Austrians  in  Bohemia  only  consisted  of 
Wittgenstein’s  Russians,  and  was  40,000  not,  as  was  really  the 
case,  125,000  strong,  the  Emperor  directed  his  attention  to  the 
Army  of  Silesia,  imagining  that  Bliicher  rather  than  Schwarzen- 
berg  was  at  the  head  of  the  principal  army  of  the  Allies.  The 
troops  upon  whom  he  was  relying  to  keep  the  Army  of  Silesia 
in  check  were  Sebastiani’s  cavalry  and  the  infantry  of  Ney 
(III rd  Corps),  Lauriston  (Vth)  and  Macdonald  (Xlth).  These 
were  posted  along  a  line  which  rested  its  right  on  the  Riesen- 
gebirge  near  Friedeberg,  and  its  left  on  the  Oder  near  Parch- 
witz.  Similarly  Kellermann’s  cavalry  and  Poniatowski’s  Poles 
(the  VUIth  Corps)  faced  Southwards  towards  Bohemia  on  the 
right  bank  of  the  Elbe,  and  in  conjunction  with  St.  Cyr’s 
infantry  (XI Vth  Corps)  and  L’Heritier’s  cavalry  on  the  left 
bank  covered  Saxony  and  Lusatia  against  the  Army  of 
Bohemia.  The  Guard  in  and  around  Gorlitz,  Vandamme’s 
corps  (1st)  at  Bautzen,  Victor’s  infantry  (Ilnd)  and  Latour- 
Maubourg’s  cavalry  between  Gorlitz  and  Zittau  with  Marmont’s 
corps  (Vlth)  at  Bunzlau  formed  the  central  reserve,  available 
for  service  on  either  front. 

The  Emperor’s  original  idea  seems  to  have  been  to  push 
forward  into  Bohemia  up  the  right  bank  of  the  Elbe ;  possibly 
he  hoped  so  to  catch  Wittgenstein  in  flank  before  he  could 
execute  his  bold  march  across  the  French  front.  However,  it 
was  soon  discovered  that  the  Austrians  and  their  allies  were 
all  on  the  left  bank,1  and  Napoleon,  still  under  the  impression 
that  the  Army  of  Silesia,  which  had  just  (August  17th)  begun 
to  press  in  upon  the  French  corps  in  its  front,  was  the  principal 
force  of  the  Allies,  decided  to  turn  against  it  and  to  defer  the 
invasion  of  Bohemia  until  after  the  destruction  of  the  Army 
of  Silesia,  when  he  would  be  able  to  use  the  Lusatian  passes 
for  an  advance  against  Schwarzenberg.  He  saw  that  an  ad¬ 
vance  even  to  Prague  would  be  a  blow  wasted  on  the  air  unless 
it  brought  on  a  decisive  action,  and  that  even  a  victory  over 
Schwarzenberg  would  leave  him  in  a  difficult  position  if  in  the 
meantime  his  communications  with  Lusatia  through  Zittau  and 
Gorlitz  were  to  be  severed  by  Bliicher  driving  Ney’s  containing 

1  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  189. 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  II— TO  KULM  603 


force  in  upon  Dresden.  Accordingly  the  Emperor  left  Victor 
and  Vandamme  to  support  Poniatowski  and  Kellermann  and  to 
keep  touch  with  St.  Cyr  at  Dresden  by  means  of  the  bridges  at 
Pirna  and  Konigstein  ;  and  having  thus,  as  he  thought,  provided 
against  any  move  Schwarzenberg  was  likely  to  make,  he  hastened 
(Aug.  20th)  with  the  rest  of  the  reserve  to  the  assistance  of 
Ney’s  “Army  of  the  Bober,”  against  which  the  Army  of  Silesia 
was  beginning  to  push  forward.  Bliicher’s  advance  had  forced 
Ney  to  fall  back  rather  rapidly  from  the  Katzbach  to  the  Bober 
(Aug.  17th  to  20th),  and  the  Army  of  Silesia  was  about  to 
follow  up  its  success  by  an  attack  on  the  French  positions 
between  Bunzlau  and  Lowenberg  when  the  arrival  of  Napoleon 
and  his  reserves  was  announced  to  the  Prussian  commander 
(Aug.  20th).  For  an  action  against  one  of  Napoleon’s  lieutenants 
the  Army  of  Silesia  was  ready  and  even  anxious,  but  to  fight 
the  Emperor  himself  was  a  very  different  matter,  and  in  accord¬ 
ance  with  the  fixed  principle  which  governed  the  Allies’  opera¬ 
tions,  Bliicher  decamped  hastily  Eastward  rather  than  give 
Napoleon  the  chance  of  a  pitched  battle,  a  decision  for  which 
Ltitzen,  Bautzen  and  Dresden  afford  ample  justification. 
Napoleon  pursued  vigorously,  and  there  was  some  sharp  rear¬ 
guard  fighting  in  which  the  Allies  suffered  severely ;  but  they 
made  good  their  escape  behind  the  Katzbach,  and  Napoleon 
had  to  admit  that  they  had  evaded  him.  He  could  press  the 
pursuit  no  further,  for  urgent  messages  reached  him  from  St. 
Cyr  that  the  Army  of  Bohemia  had  crossed  the  Erzgebirge  and 
was  threatening  Dresden.  Accordingly  Napoleon  had  to  turn 
back  towards  the  Elbe  to  St.  Cyr’s  assistance,  taking  with  him 
the  Guards,  Marmont  and  Latour  -  Maubourg,  and  leaving 
Macdonald  with  his  own  corps  and  those  of  Ney  (now  under 
Souham),  Lauriston,  and  Sebastiani  to  contain  Bliicher  (Aug. 
23rd). 

Thus  the  French  army,  instead  of  being  concentrated  in 
superior  force  against  one  of  its  three  opponents,  had  become 
separated  into  three  or  rather  four  portions,  one  opposing  each 
of  the  Allied  armies,  and  Napoleon  with  the  central  reserve 
hurrying  back  across  Lusatia  to  save  Dresden  from  Schwarzen¬ 
berg.  The  position  was  critical,  but  Napoleon  hoped  for  the 
best.  If  only  his  lieutenants  proved  equal  to  the  tasks  allotted 
to  them,  if,  for  example,  St.  Cyr  could  keep  the  Allies  at  bay 
until  Napoleon  could  cross  the  Elbe  at  Pirna  and  fall  in  force  on 


6 04  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


the  communications  of  the  Army  of  Bohemia,  the  most  brilliant 
success  might  be  looked  for. 

But  Napoleon’s  lieutenants  were  destined  to  disappoint 
their  master’s  expectations  grievously.  Oudinot  had  con¬ 
centrated  his  army  round  Baruth  by  August  1 8th,  and  next  day 
began  his  advance  on  Berlin.  His  road  lay  through  the  belts 
of  wooded  and  swampy  country  which  lie  to  the  South  of  the 
Prussian  capital,  and  which  offer  many  good  positions  to  a 
defending  force,  besides  making  very  difficult  lateral  com¬ 
munications  between  columns  moving  forward  parallel  along 
the  main  roads.  Still  at  first  he  made  good  progress.  On  the 
2 1st  he  came  into  touch  with  the  Army  of  the  North  between 
Trebbin  and  Zossen,  and  drove  in  its  outposts  after  some  sharp 
fighting,  so  that  by  the  evening  of  the  22nd,  despite  the  difficul¬ 
ties  of  the  country,  he  had  won  his  way  through  the  worst  part, 
and  all  that  remained  was  to  attack  the  main  position  of  the 
Army  of  the  North.  This  force  was  standing  at  bay  with  its 
right  at  Giitergotz  and  its  left — Tauentzien’s  Landwehr — at 
Blankenfelde.  Bernadotte,  indeed,  being  for  political  reasons 
very  anxious  to  avoid  all  risks  of  a  defeat,  would  have  preferred 
not  to  give  battle  South  of  the  Spree  at  all,  but  to  have  retired 
across  that  river  so  as  to  make  use  of  the  defensive  capacities 
of  the  country  to  the  North  of  it,  which  was  admirably  adapted 
for  the  policy  he  wished  to  adopt  of  keeping  the  enemy  at  bay 
without  allowing  him  to  force  on  a  battle.  However,  the 
protection  of  Berlin  had  been  one  of  the  tasks  assigned  to  his 
army  at  Trachenberg,  and  Biilow  was  urgent  in  his  demands 
that  a  battle  should  be  risked  for  the  Prussian  capital.  For 
this  purpose  the  position  Bernadotte  selected  was  well  adapted ; 
it  was  fairly  strong,  and  it  covered  the  three  main  roads  which 
converge  on  Berlin  from  the  Southward.  The  French,  having 
still  some  woods  to  pass  through,  were  moving  in  three  columns 
quite  independently  and  not  expecting  a  battle.  This,  with  the 
indifferent  scouting  of  their  cavalry,  was  the  main  cause  of  the 
disaster  which  befell  them.  Their  attacks  were  not  delivered 
simultaneously,  and  their  left  column,  Oudinot’s  own  corps  and 
Arrighi’s  cavalry,  was  so  much  behind  that  it  practically  took  no 
part  in  the  action.  Thus  though  Reynier,  moving  by  the 
central  road,  carried  Gross  Beeren  at  the  first  attack,  and  main¬ 
tained  himself  there  from  3  p.m.  till  after  7,  he  received  no 
assistance  from  his  colleagues,  and  could  only  oppose  18,000 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  II— TO  KULM  605 


men  to  Biilow,  who  had  double  that  number.1  Even  so  the 
Vllth  Corps  did  very  well,  and  Sahr’s  Saxon  division,  though 
exposed  to  a  heavy  cannonade,  held  on  most  tenaciously  to 
Gross  Beeren  until  simultaneously  taken  in  flank  by  Borstell’s 
Pomeranians  and  assailed  in  front  by  the  three  other  Prussian 
divisions.  Gross  Beeren  was  lost,  and  Durutte’s  French  divi¬ 
sion  became  involved  in  Sahr’s  overthrow.  Lecoq’s  Saxons 
then  intervened  and  endeavoured  to  retrieve  the  day  by  an 
advance  against  Billow’s  right ;  but  they  were  checked  by 
some  Swedish  light  infantry,  and  Reynier’s  whole  corps  went  to 
its  rear  in  confusion,  leaving  over  3000  men  behind.  Too  late 
Oudinot’s  own  vanguard  reached  the  field  :  the  rout  of  the 
centre  compelled  it  to  retreat.  Bertrand  meanwhile  had 
opened  the  action  with  some  success  against  Tauentzien,  who 
was  barring  the  Eastern  road  at  Blankenfelde  ;  but  he  had  failed 
to  push  his  advantage  home  and  now  had  to  conform  to  the 
retrograde  movement.  By  September  2nd  Oudinot  was  back 
at  Wittenberg,  the  morale  and  the  physical  condition  of  his 
troops  badly  shaken.  His  defeat  had  led  to  a  further  disaster, 
for  Girard,  moving  up  from  Magdeburg  to  cover  Oudinot’s  left, 
had  found  himself  dangerously  exposed  by  the  Marshal’s  retreat, 
and  in  endeavouring  to  regain  touch  with  his  colleagues  he 
was  brought  to  action  by  Hirschfeld’s  Landwehr  at  Hagelberg, 
and  totally  defeated  after  an  action  of  very  varying  fortune 
(Aug.  27th). 

Nor  was  this  the  only  bad  result  of  Gross  Beeren.  Wall- 
moden,  whose  operations  have  a  special  interest  for  English 
readers,  inasmuch  as  his  force  included  the  only  British  troops 
which  played  an  active  part  in  this  momentous  campaign,2  had 
some  25,000  to  30,000  men  at  his  disposal.  However,  Davout, 
despite  a  check  at  Kammin  (Aug.  21st)  was  forcing  him  to 
retire  Eastward,  had  himself  advanced  to  Schwerin  and  had 
pushed  Loison’s  division  as  far  as  Wismar,  forcing  Vegesack’s 
Swedes  back  to  Rostock,  when  the  news  of  Gross  Beeren  com¬ 
pelled  him  to  retire  to  the  Stecknitz  and  adopt  a  defensive 
attitude. 

In  like  manner  Macdonald  had  come  to  grief.  As  already 

1  Friedrich,  App.  IV.  and  V. 

2  He  had  the  2nd  battalion  of  the  73rd  Regiment,  one  of  six  sent  out  to  garrison 
Stralsund  in  July  1813,  a  Rocket  Troop  and  two  batteries  of  the  Royal  Horse 
Artillery,  and  the  3rd  Hussars  of  the  King’s  German  Legion. 


6o6  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


mentioned,  Bliicher  had  fallen  back  from  the  Bober  just  in  time 
to  avoid  an  action  with  Napoleon  and  had  retreated  by  forced 
marches  to  Jauer  (Aug.  22nd  to  24th),  thus  returning  to  the 
positions  from  which  he  had  advanced  at  the  end  of  the 
armistice.  The  weather  had  been  very  bad,  the  roads  difficult 
and  supplies  often  short,  so  that  what  with  the  long  marches, 
many  of  them  at  night,  the  want  of  rest,  the  hardships  and 
privations  they  had  undergone,  the  constant  rearguard  actions 
and  the  apparent  uselessness  of  all  their  exertions,  the  Army  of 
Silesia  was  rapidly  being  reduced  to  a  wreck.  Yorck  protested 
violently  against  operations  which  had  brought  his  Landwehr 
battalions  almost  to  the  point  of  disbanding,1  and  had  cost  his 
corps  not  only  4000  men  in  action,  but  many  more  through  the 
toils  of  the  march.2  The  state  of  the  Russians  was  little  better, 
and  Bliicher,  realising  that  to  continue  to  carry  out  his  orders  to 
keep  close  touch  with  his  opponents  and  yet  avoid  a  battle  would 
mean  the  ruin  of  his  army,  at  length  decided  to  fight.  He  was 
moving  back  from  Jauer  to  the  Katzbach  when  he  met  the 
French  advancing  to  meet  him  (Aug.  26th). 

Macdonald  had  received  orders  from  Napoleon  to  drive  the 
Army  of  Silesia  back  beyond  Jauer,  and  then  take  up  a  position 
behind  the  Bober  to  cover  the  principal  operations  against 
Bohemia  from  interruption  by  Bliicher.3  The  order  was  unwise, 
for  Macdonald  was  hardly  strong  enough  to  put  out  of  action  an 
enemy  as  numerous  as  was  the  Army  of  Silesia,  and  Napoleon’s 
rear  might  have  been  as  efficiently  protected  against  Bliicher 
without  the  advance  to  Jauer.  But  the  Marshal  had  learnt  that 
the  enemy  were  somewhat  disorganised  by  their  sufferings,  and 
he  seems  to  have  been  to  some  extent  counting  on  this.  It  was 
rather  to  his  surprise,  therefore,  that  he  found  Bliicher  moving 
towards  him.  His  dispositions  had  been  made  for  a  fight  at 
Jauer,  and  were  none  too  well  adapted  for  immediate  action. 
Souham’s  corps  on  the  left  had  started  late  and  was  some  dis¬ 
tance  behind,  and  two  divisions,  one  of  Lauriston’s  and  one  of 
Macdonald’s  own,  had  been  detached  to  the  right  to  contain 
St.  Priest’s  Russians  near  Hirschberg  who  were  keeping  touch 
between  the  Army  of  Silesia  and  Bohemia.  Thus  Macdonald 
had  under  50,000  men  at  hand  with  whom  to  engage  the  80,000 
Allies  in  front  of  him. 

The  position  of  the  Allies  was  divided  in  two  by  the  Roaring 

1  Friedrich,  i.  41.  2  Ibid.  i.  286-289.  3  Ibid .  i.  202,  cf.  295. 


i S 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  II— TO  KULM  607 


( Wiithende )  Neisse,  on  the  left  of  which  stood  Langeron’s 
Russians,  their  right  touching  the  river  at  Schlaupe,  their  left 
resting  on  the  high  hill  of  the  Monchswald.  On  the  other  bank 
Yorck’s  Prussians  with  Sacken’s  Russians  beyond  them  were 
drawn  up  between  the  villages  of  Bellwitzhof,  Eichholtz  and  Ober 
Hochkirch,  some  way  back  from  the  edge  of  the  plateau  which 
rises  abruptly  Eastward  from  the  Neisse.  Macdonald  pushed 
Lauriston  forward  on  his  right  through  Seichau  against  Langeron 
and  sent  his  own  corps  and  Sebastiani’s  horsemen  over  the  Katz- 
bach  at  Kroitsch,  over  the  Neisse  at  Nieder  Crayn  and  Weinberg 
and  up  the  slopes  beyond.  It  was  raining  and  the  rivers  were 
rising  rapidly  ;  but  Macdonald  attacked  nevertheless  in  this  some¬ 
what  precipitate  manner,  when  he  would  have  done  better  to  wait 
for  the  arrival  of  Souham,  or  until  the  enemy  should  attack. 

On  the  French  right  things  went  well  enough.  Lauriston 
not  only  drove  in  the  Russian  front,  crossing  the  two  small 
streams  which  protected  it,  and  carrying  the  village  of  Henners- 
dorf,  but  pushed  some  battalions  in  between  Langeron’s  flank 
and  the  Monchswald,  and  by  thus  turning  his  left  drove  him 
back  on  Peterwitz.  But  in  the  centre  Macdonald’s  infantry  and 
Sebastiani’s  cavalry  had  become  much  mixed ;  they  got  in  each 
other’s  way,  and  their  attacks,  delivered  in  disorder  and  without 
cohesion,  soon  came  to  a  standstill.  Yorck’s  corps  then 
advanced  to  deliver  a  counter-attack,  and  for  some  time  the 
struggle  was  evenly  contested  until  a  flank  attack  by  Sacken’s 
Russians  on  the  French  left  sent  cavalry,  infantry  and  artillery 
in  headlong  confusion  down  the  steep  slopes  and  into  the  swollen 
and  rising  rivers.  This  quite  decided  the  day  ;  for  Souham’s  own 
division,  which  had  just  arrived  and  was  endeavouring  to  assist  its 
comrades,  became  involved  in  the  general  rout,  and  Bliicher  was 
enabled  to  send  his  reserves  to  the  assistance  of  Langeron  and 
so  to  bring  Lauriston  to  a  standstill.  Too  late  to  do  any  good, 
two  more  of  Souham’s  divisions  appeared  on  the  extreme  left, 
and  engaged  Sacken ;  but  the  battle  was  lost,  and  though 
Lauriston  held  on  to  Hennersdorf  till  nightfall  and  beat  back 
Langeron’s  repeated  attacks,  he  could  do  no  more  than  retire  in 
fair  order.  The  retreat  was  a  terrible  experience  :  Macdonald’s 
corps  went  completely  to  pieces  and  became  a  huddled  mass  of 
fugitives ;  Lauriston  and  Souham  managed  to  preserve  some 
measure  of  order,  but  the  weather  was  most  inclement,  and 
Gneisenau  pressed  the  pursuit  with  relentless  energy,  though 


6o8  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


hampered  by  the  continual  rains  and  the  swollen  mountain 
torrents  in  his  way.  By  the  1  st  of  September  the  relics  of  the  Army 
of  the  Bober  were  behind  the  Queiss,  a  rabble  rather  than  an  army; 
discipline  had  lost  its  hold  over  the  men,  whole  divisions  had 
been  cut  to  pieces,  over  100  guns  and  18,000  prisoners  had  fallen 
into  the  hands  of  the  Allies,  while  as  many  more  had  perished. 
But  for  the  moment  the  condition  of  their  pursuers  was  little 
better:  Yorck’s  ill-equipped  Landwehr  regiments  had  dwindled 
in  some  cases  to  a  tenth  of  their  establishment,  and  the  exertions 
and  hardships  of  the  pursuit  had  been  so  great  that  it  could  not 
be  pressed  any  further.1  Moreover,  news  had  come  from  Dresden 
which  made  Bliicher  pause. 

If  the  advance  of  the  Army  of  Bohemia  had  been  conducted 
with  rather  more  energy  and  definiteness  of  purpose  a  great  deal 
more  success  might  have  been  obtained.  But  the  roads  over  the 
mountains  were  in  a  very  bad  condition,  and  the  Staff  of  the 
army  was  hardly  equal  to  moving  so  large  a  force.  Nor  was  the 
object  of  the  advance  very  clear.  Schwarzenberg  was  somewhat 
loath  to  embark  upon  it,  he  would  have  preferred  to  leave  to  the 
enemy  the  difficulties  of  crossing  the  mountains  in  order  to  bring 
on  a  battle.  However,  Napoleon  showed  no  disposition  to  fall 
in  with  this  desire,  and  the  main  army  could  not  afford  to  remain 
idle  while  Bliicher  and  Bernadotte  might  be  being  beaten  in 
detail.  Accordingly  on  August  19th  the  Allies  set  out  Northward 
with  the  idea  of  striking  a  blow  at  Napoleon’s  communications 
by  seizing  Leipzig.  Moving  in  four  columns  they  crossed  the 
watershed  on  August  22nd,  and  made  for  Chemnitz;  but  finding 
that  only  on  the  right  (Wittgenstein’s  Russians)  was  any  resist¬ 
ance  offered,  and  that  an  advance  to  Leipzig  would  not  bring 
them  into  contact  with  any  of  their  enemies,  they  had  to  alter 
their  plans.  At  a  council  of  war  held  at  Zoplitz  on  the  22nd, 
it  was  decided  to  turn  North-Eastward  against  Dresden,  which 
was  known  to  be  but  weakly  held.  It  was  this  advance  of  which 
the  news  reached  Napoleon  at  Gorlitz  on  the  evening  of  the  23rd, 
and  brought  him  back  in  haste  to  the  Elbe.2 

On  the  afternoon  of  August  25th  the  vanguard  of  the  Allies 
appeared  before  Dresden.  Marshal  St.  Cyr  had  fallen  back 
before  them  with  three  of  his  four  infantry  divisions,  a  force 
which  even  when  the  5000  troops  of  the  garrison  be  added  to  it 
cannot  have  much  exceeded  25,000.  His  remaining  division  was 
1  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  327.  2  Ibid.  i.  209. 


( 


1 8  t  3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  II— TO  KULM  609 


at  Konigstein  seeking  to  keep  open  that  line  for  Napoleon’s  pro¬ 
jected  advance.  Marshal  Vandamme,  whose  corps  was  the 
nearest  to  Dresden,  and  might  have  been  in  that  city  by  the 
evening  of  the  24th,1  had  not  moved  from  Rumburg  and  New- 
stadt,  and  Victor  was  still  farther  away.  Thus,  if  the  Allies  had 
attacked  at  once,  it  is  probable  that  they  would  have  captured 
the  town.  It  is  true  that  less  than  half  of  their  total  force  had 
arrived,  but  the  80,000  on  the  spot  ought  to  have  been  more  than 
sufficient  for  the  task  :  the  garrison  was  less  than  a  third  of  their 
strength,  and  the  extensive  fortifications,  too  large  for  so  small  a 
force,  were  hastily  constructed  and  weak.  But  the  Allies  hesitated, 
and  let  the  opportunity  escape.  The  responsibility  for  this 
grievous  oversight  has  been  repudiated  on  behalf  of  all  the 
principal  persons  on  the  Allied  side.  Jomini  and  others  have 
blamed  Schwarzenberg  for  the  delay,  whereas  that  general’s  bio¬ 
grapher,  Prokesch,  claims  that  he  was  anxious  to  attack  ;  and  it 
would  seem  that  really  it  was  the  Czar  who  was  responsible 
for  the  inaction  of  the  Allies,  and  that  Schwarzenberg  allowed 
Alexander  to  overrule  his  own  better  judgment.2 

Be  this  as  it  may,  the  delay  saved  Dresden.  That  evening 
the  garrison  were  able  to  see  on  the  Eastern  horizon  the  distant 
bivouac  fires  of  the  returning  Guards  ;  and  when,  about  six  o’clock 
next  morning  (Aug.  26th),  the  Allies  did  at  last  attack,  the 
assault  was  not  directed  with  much  vigour.  On  the  Allied  right, 
Wittgenstein’s  Russians  made  some  headway  along  the  low 
ridge  running  along  the  Elbe  from  the  Blasowitz  woods  to  the 
city.  Next  to  them  Kleist’s  Prussians  effected  a  lodgment  in 
the  Grosse  Garten,  the  public  park  on  the  South-East  of  the 
town,  while  the  Austrians  on  the  left  centre  carried  the  village 
of  Plauen  only  to  be  repulsed  from  the  Wildsruffer  suburb. 
Beyond  the  little  river  Weisseritz  also  the  Austrians  made  much 
headway,  carrying  Lobtau  and  driving  the  French  back  into  the 
Friedrichstadt  ;  but  in  no  one  quarter  was  the  attack  pressed 
home,  and  every  minute  brought  the  reinforcements  from  Lusatia 
nearer.  It  was  between  one  and  two  in  the  afternoon  that  the 
leading  regiments  of  the  Young  Guard  hurled  themselves  into 
the  fight  on  the  extreme  French  left,  dislodging  the  Russians 
who  had  begun  to  make  their  way  into  the  Pirna  suburb.  From 
that  moment  a  continuous  stream  of  troops  came  pouring  across 
the  great  bridges  over  the  Elbe,  and  Dresden  was  safe. 

1  Cf.  Friedrich,  i.  208.  2  Ibid.  i.  179-1S1. 


39 


6  io  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


It  was  when  all  real  chance  of  success  was  gone  and  they 
would  really  have  done  better  to  be  preparing  to  retreat,  that  the 
Allies  suddenly  launched  their  belated  attack  in  force  against  the 
town.  It  was  everywhere  repulsed.  Mortier  on  the  left  drove 
Wittgenstein  back  beyond  Striesen.  Pirch  and  Ziethen  by  a 
great  effort  carried  the  Grosse  Garten,  and  reached  the  suburb 
behind,  only  to  be  hurled  back  by  another  division  of  the  Young 
Guard.  On  their  left  another  Prussian  brigade  went  reeling  back 
in  disorder  to  Strehla,  and  even  Colloredo’s  Austrians,  who  had 
made  a  lodgment  in  one  of  the  French  batteries  and  were  press¬ 
ing  on,  were  driven  from  the  ground  they  had  so  hardly  won  by 
the  bayonets  of  the  Old  Guard.  All  along  the  line  the  Allies 
had  to  go  back.  West  of  the  Weisseritz  their  attacks  had  made 
little  further  advance,  and  about  6  p.m.  Murat  headed  a  sortie 
which  drove  them  back  to  Lobtau  and  the  adjacent  villages.  By 
nightfall  the  French  had  not  only  recovered  all  the  ground  they 
had  lost,  but  were  well  posted  for  following  up  their  success  by 
a  counter-attack  next  day.  The  Allies  would  have  been  well 
advised  if  they  had  retired :  there  was  nothing  to  be  gained 
by  retaining  their  positions,  especially  as  their  supplies  were 
beginning  to  run  short.  But  Frederick  William  felt  that  it  would 
be  too  much  of  a  confession  of  weakness  to  retire,  and  it  was 
largely  due  to  him  that  they  remained  to  tempt  their  fate. 

The  principal  effort  of  the  French  on  the  next  morning  was 
directed  against  the  Allied  right.  Here  Mortier  with  two 
divisions  of  the  Young  Guard  and  Nansouty’s  cavalry  outflanked 
the  Russians,  and  pushing  them  back  towards  the  South  and 
West  gained  possession  of  Seidnitz  and  Gross  Dobritz,  thus 
driving  them  off  from  the  Pirna  road.  St.  Cyr  advancing  from 
the  Grosse  Garten  deprived  the  Prussians  of  Strehla,  while 
Marmont,  who  continued  the  line  to  the  Westward,  kept  the 
Austrians  opposite  him  in  play.  Beyond  the  Weisseritz,  Victor 
attacked  and  carried  the  heights  between  Dolzschen  and  Wolff- 
nitz,  while  under  cover  of  his  operations  Murat  was  directing 
Latour-Maubourg’s  cavalry  and  an  odd  brigade  of  Vandamme’s 
corps  in  a  sweeping  movement  round  by  Burgstadtel  which  was 
to  roll  up  the  Austrian  left.  About  midday  the  battle  rather 
languished.  Mortier  carried  Reick,  but  could  get  no  farther,  for 
the  Russian  reserve  cavalry  outnumbered  Nansouty  by  three  to 
one  and  menaced  his  flank.  Similarly,  St.  Cyr  could  not  obtain 
secure  possession  of  Leubnitz.  It  was  on  the  left  of  the  Weis- 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  II— TO  KULM  6  u 


seritz  that  the  decisive  stroke  was  dealt.  Soon  after  Victor  had 
carried  Ober  Gorbitz,  thereby  cutting  off  part  of  Alois  Lichten¬ 
stein’s  division  and  forcing  that  of  Weissenwolff  to  retire,  Teste’s 
infantry  and  Chastel’s  cavalry  appeared  in  rear  of  the  Austrian 
left  at  Pennrich.  The  rest  of  Murat’s  horsemen  were  quickly 
thrown  into  the  fight.  Ten  Austrian  battalions  were  cut  off  and 
taken  to  a  man,  the  rest  of  their  left  wing  fell  back  in  complete 
confusion  along  the  Kesselsdorf  road  with  Murat’s  troopers  at 
their  heels. 

After  this  there  could  be  no  question  as  to  the  retreat  of  the 
Allies :  to  stay  on  would  play  into  Napoleon’s  hands,  and,  more¬ 
over,  Vandamme,  though  stoutly  opposed  by  the  Russian  corps 
under  Eugene  of  Wiirtemberg,  which  had  been  left  at  Pirna  to 
keep  open  the  road  to  Toplitz,  was  beginning  to  make  his  pre¬ 
sence  felt.  Luckily  for  the  Allies,  Napoleon  did  not  press  home 
his  attacks  on  the  afternoon  of  the  27th ;  his  men  had  had  a  full 
share  of  marching  and  fighting,  and  were  tired  out,  and  he  was 
also  waiting  to  let  Vandamme’s  operations  develope.  Thus  the 
Allies  maintained  their  positions  till  the  evening  and  withdrew 
under  cover  of  night,  Barclay  with  the  Russians  and  Kleist  being 
given  the  road  by  Peterswalde  to  Toplitz,  the  Austrians  of  the 
centre  that  by  Dippoldiswalde  to  Brux,  Klenau’s  unengaged 
reserve  and  the  relics  of  the  left  wing  taking  the  road  through 
Tharandt  to  Freiberg.  Thus  the  28th  found  the  Army  of 
Bohemia  in  full  retreat  across  the  Erzgebirge.  Worn  out  by 
their  exertions  and  hardships,  ill-clad,  short  of  food,  ill-equipped, 
their  columns,  even  though  but  leisurely  pursued,  left  numbers  of 
stragglers  and  prisoners  behind  as  they  toiled  in  inclement 
weather  along  the  indifferent  mountain  roads.  The  Poles  in  the 
Austrian  ranks  deserted  freely,  and  some  of  the  Prussian  Lcind- 
wehr  battalions  lost  all  cohesion.  A  more  vigorous  pursuit 
might  have  turned  the  retreat  into  a  rout,  and  if  Vandamme 
had  been  able  to  forestall  the  Allies  in  reaching  Toplitz  their 
plight  would  have  been  perilous.  But  Vandamme,  partly  owing 
to  the  gallant  resistance  of  Eugene  of  Wiirtemberg,  partly  owing 
to  the  mistakes  made  by  the  other  pursuing  columns,  partly 
to  the  accident  that  Barclay’s  disobedience  of  his  orders  brought 
Kleist’s  corps  unexpectedly  to  Fiirstenwalde  on  the  evening 
of  the  29th,  failed  to  accomplish  his  task.  He  had  with  him 
nearly  40,000  men,  all  his  own  corps  save  a  few  battalions,  a 
division  of  St.  Cyr’s  (Mouton’s),  a  brigade  of  Victor’s  and  a  light 


6 12  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


cavalry  division  (Corbineau’s)  of  Latour-Maubourg’s  corps.  He 
had  crossed  at  Konigstein  on  the  26th,  had  been  sharply  engaged 
with  Eugene  most  of  that  day,  finally  gaining  possession  of 
the  Pirna  plateau,  and  by  the  28th  he  had  obtained  a  position 
which  flanked  the  great  road  to  Toplitz  and  threatened  to  prevent 
Eugene  retiring  by  that  way. 

Eugene,  however,  was  fully  alive  to  the  importance  of  not 
letting  Vandamme  secure  undisputed  possession  of  this  all- 
important  road,  so  on  the  28th  instead  of  falling  back  to  Maxen 
in  obedience  to  Barclay’s  orders,  which  would  have  left  the  road 
to  Toplitz  open  to  Vandamme,  he  determined  to  push  past  the 
1st  Corps  and  get  between  it  and  Toplitz.  To  do  this  he  made 
an  attack  on  Vandamme’s  lines  with  his  own  corps,  under  cover 
of  which  Ostermann’s  division  of  the  Russian  Guards  got  across 
the  front  of  the  French.  He  achieved  his  purpose  but  at  a  heavy 
cost,  for  his  corps  was  dispersed,  and  Vandamme  came  pressing 
hard  on  his  heels.  At  Priesten,  in  front  of  the  last  pass  over  the 
mountains,  Eugene  stood  at  bay  next  day,  and  after  a  fierce 
and  stubbornly-contested  action,  which  brought  his  losses  up  to 
6000  out  of  his  15,000  men,  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  keeping 
off  Vandamme  until  the  simultaneous  arrival  of  reinforcements 
and  nightfall  stopped  the  fight.  By  the  next  morning  (Aug. 
30th),  when  Vandamme  renewed  his  attempts,  such  large  re¬ 
inforcements  had  arrived  that  Eugene  was  not  only  able  to 
maintain  his  hold  upon  Priesten  and  so  keep  the  French  right 
and  centre  in  check,  but  three  Austrian  divisions  pushed  forward 
through  Karbitz  against  Vandamme’s  left.  They  were  gradually 
gaining  ground ;  and  as  none  of  his  efforts  could  shake  the  Russian 
hold  on  Priesten,  the  prospects  of  success  for  Vandamme  were 
becoming  very  faint,  when  his  failure  was  suddenly  converted 
into  disaster  by  the  arrival  of  Kleist’s  Prussians  in  his  rear.  This 
corps,  delayed  by  Barclay’s  action  in  taking  the  Dippoldiswalde 
road  in  preference  to  that  by  Peterswalde,  in  consequence  of 
which  the  road  became  overcrowded,  had  reached  Fiirstenwalde 
on  the  evening  of  the  29th  and  had  there  received  an  urgent 
summons  to  the  help  of  Eugene.  Moving  in  answer  to  this 
appeal,  Kleist  did  not  make  straight  for  Priesten,  but  took  a 
South-Easterly  direction  across  the  hills  to  Nollendorf.  Much  to 
his  surprise  and  relief  he  found  no  French  troops  on  the  road ; 
for  Napoleon,  hearing  that  the  Allies  were  retiring  South-West, 
had  diverted  the  XIVth  Corps,  which  was  to  have  followed  Van- 


DRESDEN.  August  26^&?7^  18)3 


rr 


r^jr i 


Burgstadtel 


Gorbitz 


I 


1.  Wittgenstein's  furthest  on  the  26th 

2.  Kleist’s  ••  ....  Y.G.  Young  Guardi 

3.  Colloredo k  „  Allies  position  shown  as  AM.  27th  mM  Q.G.  0 id  Guard 

4.  Chasteler's  ..  .  „  French  position  on  the  26^  f  I  R&P.G.  Russian#  Prussian  Guard  Yl.S.WiUsdruff  Suburb 

5.  Giulsis  .  French  movements  on  the  27th - V  LM.  Latour  Maubourg  P.S .  Pima  Suburb 

i start- OA-j-rrri, i^o«. 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  II— TO  KULM  613 


damme,  towards  Maxen,  and  Pajol,  who  commanded  St.  Cyr’s 
cavalry,  had  formed  an  erroneous  impression  as  to  Kleist’s  route, 
and  had  gone  astray  to  the  Westward. 

When  he  perceived  his  peril,  Vandamme  made  a  most  vigor¬ 
ous  attempt  to  extricate  himself.  His  artillery  sacrificed  them¬ 
selves  in  an  endeavour  to  keep  the  Russians  at  bay,  while  a  strong 
column  of  infantry  backed  by  Corbineau’s  cavalry  hurled  them¬ 
selves  on  the  Prussians.  At  the  same  time  eight  infantry 
battalions  took  post  at  Arbesau,  and  their  stubborn  resistance 
prevented  the  Austrians  from  completing  their  outflanking 
movement  and  joining  the  Prussians.  In  and  around  Vorder 
Tellnitz  there  was  a  tremendous  struggle.  The  desperate  energy 
of  Vandamme’s  attack  was  more  than  the  Prussians  could  stand. 
The  Landwehr  gave  way  by  battalions,  and  the  whole  corps  was 
shattered  and  rent  asunder.  But  the  French  had  spent  them¬ 
selves  in  the  effort,  and  on  finding  their  path  barred  at  Jungfern- 
dorf,  a  few  miles  farther  North,  by  a  brigade  which  Kleist  had 
pushed  out  thither  to  secure  his  rear,  many  of  those  who  had 
made  their  way  through  Tellnitz  laid  down  their  arms  in  sheer 
exhaustion.  Still  a  good  many  escaped,  including  most  of  the 
cavalry ;  while  Mouton,  whose  division  formed  the  extreme  right 
of  the  French  line,  seeing  that  retreat  through  Kulm  along  the 
high  road  was  out  of  the  question  for  him,  took  at  once  to  the 
hills  and  so  got  away  to  Ebersdorf  and  Flirstenwalde.  Still  the 
1st  Corps  as  a  fighting  force  had  ceased  to  exist,  10,000  men 
were  killed  and  wounded,  as  many  more  were  taken  together 
with  their  commander  and  82  guns.  It  was  a  disaster  of 
enormous  importance.  Not  merely  had  Napoleon’s  plan  for 
reaping  the  fruits  of  Dresden  miscarried  entirely,  but  the  Army 
of  Bohemia,  which  on  the  28th  had  been  retiring  in  the  deepest 
dejection  and  depression,  could  now  claim  a  victory  won  almost 
under  the  eyes  of  Napoleon.  Not  much  had  been  wanted  to 
convert  the  failure  of  the  blow  at  Dresden  into  a  disaster,  now 
the  tables  were  turned  and  the  fears  that  the  Emperor  might 
reply  to  that  stroke  by  a  victorious  march  on  Prague  need  no 
longer  be  entertained.  Indeed,  even  before  the  news  of  Kulm, 
Napoleon  had  been  forced  to  abandon  all  idea  of  an  immediate 
invasion  of  Bohemia  by  hearing  of  the  defeats  of  Oudinot  and 
Macdonald,  and  to  some  extent  the  successes  of  Bliicher  and 
Bernadotte  contributed  to  that  of  August  30th  by  calling  off 
the  Emperor’s  attention  from  the  pursuit.  Had  he  been  giving 


6 14  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


his  undivided  mind  to  its  direction,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  he 
would  have  lost  touch  with  Kleist  or  left  Vandamme  altogether 
unsupported.  One  reason  no  doubt  for  his  failure  to  utilise  his 
victory  at  Dresden  was  that  he  overestimated  it,  believing  it 
another  Jena  and  not  understanding  the  great  difference  in  the 
morale  of  his  opponents  since  1806.  Thus,  Dresden  notwith¬ 
standing,  these  critical  last  ten  days  of  August  had  gone 
emphatically  in  favour  of  the  Allies.  Gross  Beeren,  the  Katzbach 
and  Kulm  were  an  ample  set-off  against  their  one  repulse,  and 
in  mere  numbers  the  French  losses  exceeded  those  of  the  Allies. 
But  the  moral  advantages  of  their  success  outweighed  its  material 
result.  If  Napoleon  himself  had  not  yet  been  beaten,  it  had 
been  conclusively  proved  that  his  lieutenants  were  not  invincible, 
and  that  even  he  could  not  altogether  disregard  the  loss  of  half 
a  million  of  soldiers.  He  had  not  managed  to  secure  even  the 
partial  success  of  the  spring  campaign ;  his  hold  on  Germany 
had  been  challenged  and  the  challengers  had  survived  the  con¬ 
flict.  A  decisive  success  for  Napoleon  at  Dresden  might  have 
confirmed  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  in  its  adherence  to  his 
cause,  the  partial  success  of  the  Allies  went  far  to  shake  the 
allegiance  of  his  German  vassals  and  to  encourage  those  who 
yearned  to  be  free  from  his  heavy  yoke. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION— LEIPZIG 

AND  HANAU 

YEN  after  the  disaster  of  Kulm,  Napoleon  could  not  bring 


I  v  himself  to  a  mere  defensive.  To  adopt  a  passive  attitude 
would  be  a  confession  of  failure,  an  admission  that  the  initia¬ 
tive  had  passed  from  his  hands,  an  invitation  to  his  wavering 
vassals  to  desert  the  cause  of  one  whose  own  actions  proclaimed 
him  no  longer  master  of  the  situation.  But  notwithstanding  the 
object-lesson  he  had  received  of  the  inherent  viciousness  of  the 
plan  of  operating  offensively  against  superior  numbers  in  several 
quarters  simultaneously,  Napoleon  failed  to  return  to  the  sounder 
strategy  of  concentrating  all  available  forces  against  the  enemy’s 
main  army.  Adhering  to  his  error,  he  sent  Ney  to  take  com¬ 
mand  of  Oudinot’s  force  and  resume  the  attack  on  Berlin,  at  the 
same  time  that  he  himself  moved  Eastward  to  the  succour  of 
Macdonald  and  to  force  an  action  on  Bliicher,  taking  with  him 
the  Guard,  Latour-Maubourg’s  cavalry  and  Marmont’s  infantry. 
But  as  before,  Bliicher’s  hasty  retreat  prevented  the  Emperor 
from  winning  the  much  desired  victory  over  the  Silesian  Army ; 
and  as  the  Army  of  Bohemia,  which  he  believed  to  be  quite  out 
of  action  for  the  time  being,  was,  on  the  contrary,  actually 
threatening  Dresden,  he  had  once  more  to  return  to  the  Saxon 
capital  (Sept.  3rd). 

Meanwhile  Ney  had  taken  command  of  the  Army  of  Berlin 
at  Wittenberg  (Sept.  3rd)  and  was  advancing  Northward.  At 
Zahna  he  was  stoutly  opposed  by  Tauentzien’s  Landwehr 
(Sept.  5th),  and  not  until  Bertrand  came  to  the  assistance  of  the 
Xllth  Corps  were  the  Prussians  forced  back  to  Juterbogk. 
Tauentzien’s  corps  had  fought  very  well,  and  it  left  3000  dead 
behind  it  and  Ney  under  the  impression  that  he  had  had  the  whole 
Army  of  the  North  in  action  against  him.  He  therefore  took 
no  precautions  to  discover  where  Biilow  and  Bernadotte  might 
be,  and  moved  forward  next  morning,  believing  the  enemy  to 

615 


616  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


be  in  full  retreat.  But  when  Bertrand  neared  Dennewitz  he 
came  into  contact  with  Tauentzien,  who  was  moving  Westward 
to  regain  touch  with  Billow.  The  French  at  once  attacked. 
An  even  and  well-contested  struggle  had  just  been  decided  in 
favour  of  the  French  by  the  arrival  of  Reynier,  when  Biilow 
came  up  to  Tauentzien’s  help.  His  fresh  divisions,  moving  up 
by  Niedergorsdorf  on  the  right  of  the  hard-pressed  Landwelir , 
fell  upon  an  Italian  division  of  the  IVth  Corps  and  routed  it. 
Reynier  intervened  and  stayed  the  Prussian  advance,  but 
reinforcements  joined  Biilow  and  he  succeeded  in  driving  the 
French  out  of  Golsdorf.  Next  Oudinot  appeared  on  the  scene 
from  Ohna,  and  engaged  and  drove  back  Biilow.  However, 
Tauentzien  was  pressing  so  hard  on  Bertrand’s  right,  a  division 
of  Wiirtembergers,  at  Rohrbeck,  that  Ney,  instead  of  pushing 
home  the  advantage  he  had  gained  against  Biilow,  disengaged 
Oudinot  and  transferred  him  to  the  right  to  reinforce  Bertrand. 
This  left  Reynier  alone  to  face  Biilow ;  and  before  the  renewed 
attacks  of  the  Prussians  his  Saxons  and  disciplinary  battalions, 
outflanked  and  outnumbered,  had  to  give  back.  Just  as  they 
were  driven  from  Golsdorf,  Bertrand’s  corps  gave  away  also,  and 
in  its  disorderly  retreat  from  Rohrbeck  Oudinot  became  involved. 
In  hopeless  confusion  the  French  fell  back  on  Torgau ;  and  had 
the  pursuit  been  pressed  with  real  energy,  Ney’s  whole  army 
might  have  been  annihilated.  As  it  was,  the  remnants  of  it 
which  rallied  behind  the  Elbe  were  in  the  most  deplorable  state. 
Its  losses  amounted  to  29,000,  of  whom  15,000  were  prisoners, 
and  the  discipline,  equipment,  and  moral  and  physical  condition 
of  those  who  remained  with  the  colours  left  much  to  be  desired. 
The  Germans  now  began  to  desert  in  numbers :  it  was  not  only 
defeat  which  was  too  much  for  their  loyalty  to  Napoleon,  the 
even  stronger  incentive  of  hunger  bade  them  depart.  The 
country  had  been  eaten  bare  of  food,  and  with  partisan  bands 
growing  increasingly  active  on  the  French  communications 
rations  began  to  be  scanty  and  irregular. 

After  Dennewitz  there  was  somewhat  of  a  lull  in.  the  opera¬ 
tions.  After  his  return  to  Dresden  from  Silesia  (Sept.  6th)  the 
Emperor  moved  South  again,  hoping  to  engage  Schwarzenberg ; 
but  once  more  he  was  baulked  of  his  desire,  not  indeed  because 
Schwarzenberg  retired,  for  after  the  outposts  had  fallen  back  to 
the  main  position  the  Austrian  commander  stood  his  ground, 
but  because  of  the  impassable  state  of  the  roads  over  the 


th 


KATZBACH  Aug.28-!8I3 


DENNEWITZ,  Sept.  8^  ISIS  (On  Pud  mots  Arrival) 


English  Miles 

t—  J I L I _ I 

l  0  • 

The  numbers  denote  divisions 
Arr *  Part  of  Ar rig  his  Cavalry  Corps 


JUTERBOGK 


d&P  * 


<\X  ( Wurtemberg  ers) 

.  3B,  t*  0  / 


***&. 


Rohrbeck 


# 


v>  •  o'i 


% 
i 


Nieder-  V 

Gorsdorf  v, _ ^  n 

Dennewitz 

o32o, 

§  <vy 

jgjGohlsdorf 

29  I  /" Bavarians) 


m 


O 

Ohna 


'ft.Y.Dok/rUisViw'-C,  Ox-YwrJy '^o«. 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  III — LEIPZIG  617 


Erzgebirge.1  Napoleon  therefore  had  again  to  return  to  Dresden 
(Sept.  1 2th).  Another  advance  towards  Nollendorf  and  Kulm  had 
the  same  result  (Sept.  17th  to  19th),  it  prevented  Schwarzenberg 
from  carrying  out  a  stroke  he  was  aiming  at  Napoleon’s  com¬ 
munications  in  the  direction  of  Leipzig ;  but  though  there  was 
some  sharp  fighting  round  Kulm,  no  general  action  followed,  and 
the  only  result  was  that  Bliicher  was  able  to  press  Macdonald 
in  on  Dresden. 

Once  again,  therefore,  Napoleon  dashed  at  Bliicher  (Sept.  22nd 
to  24th),  but  as  before  without  result.  His  weakness  in  cavalry 
made  it  difficult  for  him  to  keep  touch  with  his  enemies  ;  an  even 
heavier  handicap  was  the  want  of  stamina  of  his  troops,  which 
diminished  their  mobility  and  to  that  extent  detracted  from  the 
advantages  of  the  central  position,  while  the  growing  difficulty  of 
obtaining  supplies  in  a  country  so  exhausted  and  impoverished  as 
Saxony  seriously  increased  his  troubles.  Indeed  the  Emperor’s 
position  was  growing  most  unsafe,  and  common  prudence  would 
have  dictated  a  retreat  behind  the  Saale,  for  the  position  of  the 
Austrians  in  Bohemia  outflanked  the  line  of  the  Elbe  and  made 
it  strategically  most  unsafe.  But  a  retreat  behind  the  Saale 
would  have  abandoned  Saxony,  and  the  evacuation  of  that 
kingdom  would  have  been  the  beginning  of  the  end  for  the 
Confederation  of  the  Rhine.  To  keep  up  his  waning  prestige, 
political  and  military,  Napoleon  must  show  a  bold  front;  but  as 
days  slipped  past  and  the  great  victory  he  so  much  needed  still 
remained  to  be  won,  his  hold  on  his  half-willing  allies  grew 
weaker.  His  movements  during  this  critical  period  display 
hesitation  and  indecision  most  unusual  in  him  :  plan  after  plan 
was  formed,  begun  and  abandoned  incomplete.  One  great 
reason  was  the  insecurity  of  his  communications.  Turn  which¬ 
ever  way  he  would,  he  must  expose  his  flanks  and  rear;  and, 
above  all,  warnings  were  not  wanting  that  he  could  not  rely  on 
the  fidelity  of  the  states  which  lay  between  him  and  France. 

Indecisive  as  were  the  military  operations  upon  which  the 
month  of  September  1813  was  spent,  that  month  saw  an  event 
of  the  very  greatest  diplomatic  importance,  the  negotiation  of 
the  Treaty  of  Toplitz  (Sept.  9th).  Hitherto  Southern  and 
Western  Germany  had  remained  faithful  to  Napoleon  ;  but  not 
so  much  from  love  of  him  as  from  fear  of  the  Allies,  and  from  a 
belief  that  the  triumph  of  Austria  and  Prussia  would  be  the 

1  Yorck  von  Wartenburg,  ii.  315. 


6 18  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


death-knell  of  the  independence  of  the  minor  states.  This  fear 
was  now  removed,  and  a  door  was  opened  by  which  Napoleon’s 
vassals  might  desert  him.  The  Treaty  of  Toplitz  provided,  it  is 
true,  for  the  restoration  to  Austria  and  Prussia  of  the  dominions 
they  had  held  in  1805,  the  friendly  co-operation  of  the  Allies  in 
deciding  the  fate  of  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw,  the  re-establish¬ 
ment  of  the  House  of  Brunswick-Liineburg  in  its  old  territories, 
and,  above  all,  for  the  dissolution  of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine ; 
but  it  guaranteed  the  independence  of  the  members  of  that  body. 

This  treaty  was  a  great  triumph  for  Metternich  over  the 
party  which  desired  a  complete  reconstruction  of  Germany,  and 
therefore  urged  that  the  partisans  of  Napoleon  ought  to  be 
involved  in  their  master’s  overthrow.  Metternich’s  success 
undoubtedly  contributed  to  the  speedy  expulsion  of  the  French 
from  Germany;  for  had  Bavaria  and  Wiirtemberg  felt  that  their 
independent  existence  was  bound  up  with  the  cause  of  Napoleon, 
they  would  have  made  strenuous  efforts  on  his  behalf  instead  of 
deserting  his  standard.  Where  Stein’s  uncompromising  policy 
would  have  driven  the  clients  of  France  to  desperation, 
Metternich’s  opportunism  cut  the  ground  from  under  Napoleon’s 
feet.  That  this  at  the  same  time  greatly  delayed  anything  in 
the  way  of  the  unification  of  Germany  cannot  be  denied  ;  but 
seeing  what  the  relations  and  aims  of  Austria  and  Prussia  were, 
a  thorough  reconstruction  would  hardly  have  been  possible 
without  an  appeal  to  the  sword,  for  which  neither  Hapsburg  nor 
Hohenzollen  was  prepared. 

The  first  result  of  the  Treaty  of  Toplitz  was  the  defection  of 
Bavaria  from  the  side  of  Napoleon.  Bavaria  was  not  prepared 
to  continue  the  struggle  on  the  Emperor’s  behalf  and  to  risk  the 
hostility  of  Austria  when  such  a  way  of  escape  lay  open  to  her. 
And  though  the  withdrawal  of  Augereau’s  corps,  which  had 
been  called  off  to  Saxony,  had  left  the  Wittelsbach  kingdom 
with  barely  40,000  men  to  meet  an  Austrian  attack,  Austria 
was  ready  to  forego  the  chance  of  profiting  by  the  exposed  con¬ 
dition  of  Bavaria  if  she  could  thereby  secure  her  Western 
neighbour  for  the  side  of  the  Allies.  In  Bavaria,  Montgelas 
favoured  neutrality  but  General  Wrede  and  the  Crown  Prince 
saw  that  the  surest  way  to  avoid  being  involved  in  the  overthrow 
of  Napoleon  was  to  associate  Bavaria  as  closely  as  possible  with 
the  work  of  bringing  about  the  tyrant’s  downfall.  They  there¬ 
fore  pleaded  for  joining  the  alliance,  and  carried  their  point  By 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  III— LEIPZIG  619 


the  Treaty  of  Ried  (Oct.  8th),  Bavaria  committed  herself  to  the 
side  of  the  Allies  :  she  promised  to  restore  to  Austria  such  terri¬ 
tory  as  might  be  needed  for  the  rounding  off  of  Austria’s 
dominions,  including,  of  course,  Tyrol,  but  she  was  promised 
an  adequate  compensation.  Reuss’s  Austrians,  who  had  been 
opposing  Wrede,  now  joined  him,  and  the  joint  force  prepared  to 
intercept  Napoleon’s  communications  with  the  Rhine.1 

Meanwhile  the  decisive  movements  of  the  campaign  in 
Saxony  had  begun.  By  the  end  of  September,  Napoleon  had 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  he  must  abandon  the  right  bank  of 
the  Elbe,  and  he  had  drawn  in  the  greater  part  of  his  army  to 
Dresden  and  its  neighbourhood,  though  he  had  had  to  send 
Marmont  and  Latour-Maubourg  back  to  the  Miilde  to  support 
Ney.  That  general  was  occupied  in  reorganising  the  army 
beaten  at  Dennewitz  in  order  to  dispute  the  passage  of  the  Elbe 
should  Bernadotte,  now  on  the  right  bank  between  Zerbst  and 
Wittenberg,  attempt  to  cross.  Further  afield  an  action  of  some 
importance  had  been  fought  by  Wallmoden,  which  began  the 
isolation  of  Davout’s  corps.  That  Marshal  had  detached  a 
division  towards  Magdeburg  to  clear  the  intervening  district  of 
the  Allies  and  secure  his  communications  with  the  main  army 
of  the  French.  Thereupon  Wallmoden,  having  collected  some 
6  regiments  of  cavalry  and  1 5  battalions  of  infantry,  crossed  the 
Elbe  at  Domitz  (Sept.  1 5th)  and,  pushing  forward  to  Dannenberg, 
brought  the  French  to  action  near  the  Gohrde  Forest  (Sept. 
19th).  A  smart  contest  ended  in  the  defeat  and  retreat  of  the 
French,  the  one  British  infantry  battalion  present,  the  2nd 
battalion  of  the  73rd  Foot,  distinguishing  itself  by  the  capture 
of  a  battery  from  which  a  German  corps  had  been  repulsed.2 
Thus  Wallmoden  not  only  checked  Davout’s  move  on  Magde¬ 
burg,  but  established  himself  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Elbe,  thereby 
encouraging  the  inhabitants  of  Hanover  and  Brunswick  to  take 
arms,  Davout  the  while  remaining  inactive,  and  eventually  (end 
of  October)  retiring  into  Hamburg. 

Thus  the  line  of  the  Elbe  which  Napoleon  was  endeavouring 
to  maintain  could  no  longer  be  said  to  be  in  his  hands,  and  his 
delay  in  the  dangerously  advanced  position  of  Dresden  became 

1  The  Bavarian  contingent  with  Napoleon’s  field-army,  already  much  reduced  by 
its  losses  in  action  and  by  desertion,  now  withdrew  from  his  ranks,  returning  home¬ 
ward. 

2  Cf.  Beamish’s  King’s  German  Legion . 


620  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


daily  more  inexpedient.  His  repeated  failures  to  bring  one  or 
other  of  the  Allied  armies  to  battle  had  only  served  to  exhaust 
his  troops  and  reduce  their  numbers.  Every  day  that  passed 
without  the  decisive  success  in  a  pitched  battle  which  alone 
could  have  saved  Napoleon  made  that  decisive  success  more 
unlikely,  for  the  ranks  of  the  Austrians  and  Prussians  were 
being  replenished  with  recruits,  and  the  Russian  Army  of 
Reserve  under  Bennigsen,  60,000  strong,  was  daily  drawing 
nearer.  Napoleon,  on  the  contrary,  had  but  few  reinforcements 
to  expect.  Augereau  was  bringing  up  the  newly  organised  IXth 
Corps  to  Leipzig,  though  his  march  was  harassed  by  partisan 
corps,  by  Platof’s  Cossacks,  and  by  an  Austrian  light  division 
under  Maurice  Lichtenstein  which  had  pushed  forward  from  the 
extreme  left  of  the  Army  of  Bohemia ;  but  even  this  corps  and 
the  cavalry  of  Milhaud  who  accompanied  it,  some  good 
regiments  from  the  Army  of  Spain,  did  not  between  them 
amount  to  more  than  20,000.  Yet  the  Emperor  would  not  fall 
back  behind  the  Saale  although  the  danger  to  his  communica¬ 
tions  kept  on  compelling  him  to  detach  portions  of  his  army 
farther  and  farther  West  to  keep  the  line  open. 

September  27th  saw  the  decisive  movements  begin.  On  that 
day  Bliicher,  leaving  20,000  men  to  threaten  Dresden  from 
Bautzen,  started  North-Westward  to  join  Bernadotte,  and 
simultaneously  the  Army  of  Bohemia  began  a  movement  to  its 
left,  under  cover  of  the  divisions  which  were  observing  Dresden 
from  the  Southward.  The  object  of  these  joint  movements  was 
that  the  Allies  should  concentrate  behind  the  Saale  and  so  inter¬ 
pose  between  Napoleon  and  France,  and  force  on  the  battle  it 
was  no  longer  their  object  to  avoid.  One  thing  only  could  have 
saved  Napoleon,  a  rapid  concentration  behind  the  Saale,  followed 
by  prompt  blows  against  the  converging  forces  of  the  Allies 
before  they  could  unite.  But  such  a  course  was  unlikely,  partly 
because  the  quality  of  the  French  troops  was  such  that  their 
mobility  was  low,  partly  because  Napoleon  was  badly  served  by 
his  cavalry  and  seems  to  have  been  ill  supplied  with  news  of  his 
enemies’  movements,  but  also  because  when  he  moved  from 
Dresden  he  failed  to  first  concentrate  his  army  before  trying  to 
bring  his  enemies  to  action. 

Bliicher  took  with  him  some  65,000  men,  Yorck’s  Prussians 
and  the  Russians  of  Langeron  and  Sacken.  By  October  3rd  he 
was  at  the  confluence  of  the  Elbe  and  Black  Elster,  where  he 


i8i3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  III— LEIPZIG  621 


set  about  attempting  a  passage.  Simultaneously  Bernadotte 
advanced  against  the  bridges  of  Acklowand  Rosslau  lower  down 
the  river,  in  order  to  occupy  the  left  wing  of  the  French  Army 
of  the  North  and  prevent  Reynier,  whose  corps  had  charge  of 
those  passages,  coming  to  the  aid  of  Bertrand  who  was  opposing 
Bliicher’s  crossing.1 

Bertrand  made  an  obstinate  resistance  and  inflicted  no  small 
loss  on  Yorck,  but  the  latter’s  numbers  were  too  much  for  him, 
and  enabled  Bliicher  to  force  his  way  across  at  Bleddin  on 
Bertrand’s  right.  Accordingly  the  I  Vth  Corps  fell  back  towards 
Dtiben  and  Bitterfeld,  on  which  places  Reynier  also  retired, 
having  failed  to  prevent  Bernadotte  from  forcing  the  passages  at 
Acklow  and  Rosslau.  Thus  October  4th  saw  both  the  Army 
of  the  North  and  that  of  Silesia  established  on  the  left  bank  of 
the  Elbe,  and  three  days  later  their  forces  came  into  touch 
between  the  Miilde  and  the  Saale,  threatening  Leipzig  from  the 
North,  while  from  the  South  Schwarzenburg  was  moving  upon 
that  city,  having  put  his  troops  in  motion  on  September  26th. 
Meanwhile  Napoleon  had  at  last  left  Dresden.  On  October  7th 
he  had  announced  his  intention  of  evacuating  Dresden  and  falling 
back  to  the  Miilde,  where  he  meant  to  adopt  a  central  position  at 
Wiirzen,  from  which  he  could  assist  either  the  corps  holding  the 
passages  of  the  Middle  Elbe  or  those  covering  Leipzig  against 
Schwarzenberg.  These  had  been  placed  under  Murat,  and 
included  Victor,  Lauriston,  Poniatowski  and  L’Heritier’s  cavalry, 
in  all  about  40,000.  By  the  evening  of  the  8th  the  move  had 
been  carried  out  and  the  Guard,  Sebastiani  and  Macdonald  were 
at  Wiirzen,  giving  a  central  force  of  64,000  men,  Marmont  and 
Latour-Maubourgwith  25,000  more  being  in  easy  reach  at  Taucha. 
But  this  force  should  have  been  nearly  30,000  stronger  had  not 
Napoleon,  with  an  unwisdom  almost  incredible  in  one  who  had 
written,2  “  Whenever  one  wishes  to  fight  a  battle,  one  should  not 
divide  but  concentrate  all  one’s  forces,”  left  St.  Cyr  with  his  own 
corps  and  the  remnants  of  the  1st,  now  under  Lobau,  to  hold 
on  to  Dresden,  a  position  which  had  ceased  to  have  any  great 
strategical  value  the  moment  the  line  of  the  Elbe  was  abandoned. 

1  After  Uennewitz,  Oudinot’s  corps  (Xllth)  was  so  much  reduced  that  the  remnants 
of  it  were  incorporated  in  the  I  Vth  and  Vllth  Corps,  which  mustered  between  them 
about  20  to  25,000  men,  instead  of  the  65,000  these  three  had  totalled  before  Gross 
Beeren.  The  two  Saxon  divisions  of  Reynier  were  amalgamated  at  the  same  time. 

2  Napoleon  to  Berthier,  Dec.  6th,  1811. 


622  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 

The  Emperor’s  next  move  was  to  the  Northward,  yet  another 
attempt  to  catch  the  wary  foe  who  had  so  frequently  escaped, 
but  once  again  Bliicher  evaded  the  action  which  Napoleon  sought 
to  force  on  him.  To  do  this  he  had  indeed  to  sacrifice  his  com¬ 
munications,  but  he  was  successful  in  slipping  away  Westward 
across  Napoleon’s  front  and  placing  himself  behind  the  Saale  in 
touch  with  Bernadotte.  That  commander,  nervously  apprehen¬ 
sive  of  the  political  consequences  of  a  defeat,  would  have  been 
glad  to  withdraw  from  such  dangerous  proximity  to  the  Emperor, 
but  the  representations  of  Charles  Stewart,  the  English  representa¬ 
tive  with  the  Army  of  the  North,  induced  him  to  abandon  his 
intention  of  retiring  to  the  comparative  safety  of  the  right  bank 
of  the  Elbe,  and  thus  the  joint  armies  of  Silesia  and  the  North 
took  post  on  the  left  of  the  Saale,  menacing  Leipzig  from  the 
North-West,  and  ready  to  move  in  upon  it  as  soon  as  Schwarzen- 
berg’s  cautious  advance  from  the  South-East  should  make 
co-operation  possible. 

The  result  of  Bliicher’s  Westward  move,  a  step  probably 
taken  by  the  advice  of  his  Chief  of  Staff,  Gneisenau,  was  that 
Napoleon  on  pushing  forward  to  the  Elbe  found  no  one  but 
Tauentzien’s  Landwehr  in  his  front  (Oct.  9th  to  nth).  Thus  the 
Emperor’s  scheme  for  driving  Bliicher  and  Bernadotte  out  of 
reach  of  their  allies  miscarried  completely.  In  vain  he  secured 
the  passages  over  the  Elbe  and  drove  Tauentzien  back  with  some 
loss  ;  the  news  of  Schwarzenberg’s  advance  on  Leipzig  stayed  his 
advance  further.  The  Austrian  commander  was  pushing  steadily 
forward,  forcing  Murat  back  before  him  ;  and  even  Napoleon  could 
not  venture  to  attempt  any  of  the  hazardous  projects  of  a  dash 
on  Berlin,  or  of  a  move  up  the  right  bank  of  the  Elbe  to  Torgau 
to  recross  there  and  strike  at  Schwarzenberg’s  rear,  which  he 
contemplated  only  to  lay  aside. 

Accordingly,  on  October  12th  the  Emperor  gave  orders  for 
the  troops  under  his  immediate  command  to  return  to  Leipzig. 
This  decision  was  undoubtedly  correct.  Now  that  Schwarzenberg 
was  really  placing  the  Army  of  Bohemia  within  the  Emperor’s 
reach,  the  only  chance  of  victory  lay  in  Napoleon’s  being  able  to 
defeat  him  before  Bliicher  or  Bernadotte  could  intervene.  Every 
available  man  should  have  been  set  on  the  road  to  Leipzig;  and 
it  was  a  grievous  error  to  have  let  Reynier,  who  had  crossed  to 
the  right  bank  of  the  Elbe  on  the  nth,  push  his  pursuit  of 
Tauentzien  further  on  the  1 2th.  Leipzig  was  the  critical  spot,  and 


Map  to  illustrate  Movements  between  DRESDEN  &  LEIPZIG 


' 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  III— LEIPZIG  623 


Leipzig  was  in  some  peril,  for  Schwarzenberg  had  driven  Murat 
right  in  on  the  town;  and  though  a  sharp  action  around  Wachau 
and  Liebertwolkwitz  on  the  14th  had  resulted  in  the  repulse  of 
the  Allies,  the  French  counter-attack  had  failed. 

By  the  evening  of  the  15th  Napoleon  had  concentrated  round 
Leipzig  between  170,000  and  180,000  men,  though  several 
divisions,  including  one  of  the  Illrd  Corps  (Ney’s)  and  all 
Reynier’s  (VII.),  were  still  absent.  Schwarzenberg, though  actually 
superior  in  numbers,  had  not  so  large  a  proportion  of  his  army 
with  him,  and  unless  the  Army  of  Bohemia  were  supported  by 
its  allies  from  beyond  the  Saale  there  seemed  a  chance  that 
Napoleon  might  snatch  a  victory  at  this  eleventh  hour.  But 
nothing  short  of  complete  victory  would  suffice.  Failure  to 
defeat  Schwarzenberg  would  mean  that  the  ultimate  victory  was 
only  a  question  of  when  the  Allies’  reinforcements  would  be  up. 

Napoleon’s  main  body  lay  to  the  South  of  Leipzig:  its  right, 
Poniatowski’s  Poles  (VI 1 1.), on  the  Pleisse  between  Connewitz  and 
Mark  Kleeberg.  Next  them  stood  Victor  (II.)  at  Wachau,  and 
Lauriston  (V.)  at  Liebertwolkwitz,  with  Augereau’s  IXth  Corps, 
recently  arrived  from  Bavaria,  flung  back  so  as  to  cover  the  left 
flank  of  the  line  and  holding  Zuckelhausen  and  Holzhausen.  In 
support  of  these  infantry  were  the  cavalry  corps  of  Kellermann 
at  Dosen,  of  Latour  -  Maubourg  at  Zweinaundorf,  and  of 
Sebastiani  in  support  of  Augereau.  When  the  battle  began  Mac¬ 
donald  (XI.)  was  at  Taucha  moving  up  towards  Holzhausen,  and 
Souham  with  two  of  Ney’s  divisions  (III.)  had  reached  Mockau. 
To  the  North  of  the  town  Marmont  (VI.)  was  between  Breitenfeld 
and  Mockern,  Bertrand  (IV.)  at  Eutritzsch,  Arrighi’s  cavalry  in 
support.  The  Guards  were  at  Reudnitz  and  Crottendorf  as  a 
general  reserve,  and  Reynier  (VII.)  was  on  his  way  from  Diiben. 
Had  the  Emperor  decided  there  and  then  to  engage  Schwarzen¬ 
berg,  the  chances  would  have  been  in  favour  of  the  French ;  for 
Bliicher,  who  was  on  the  road  from  Halle,  had  not  got  beyond 
Gross  Kugel,  and  Bernadotte  at  Zolbig  and  Oppen  was  still 
farther  away.  However,  the  Emperor,  never  believing  that 
Bliicher  or  Bernadotte  would  be  able  to  interfere  in  the  least 
with  his  operations  next  day,  let  the  valuable  hours  slip  by 
unused,  making  all  preparations  to  concentrate  every  man  South 
of  Leipzig  next  morning  to  fall  on  Schwarzenberg. 

But  next  morning  (Oct.  16th),  when  Marmont  prepared  to 
move  from  the  North  of  the  Parthe  to  Liebertwolkwitz  to  support 


624  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


the  great  attack  on  the  Austrians  which  the  Emperor  had  planned, 
he  found  Bliicher  pressing  in  so  close  upon  him  that  he  had  to 
face  about,  taking  post  from  Mockern  on  his  left  to  Widderitsch 
on  his  right,  where  Ney’s  divisions  were  beginning  to  arrive. 
Meanwhile  to  the  South  the  main  action  had  begun.  Here  the 
Army  of  Bohemia  was  moving  forward  on  both  sides  of  the 
Elster  and  of  the  Pleisse.  Schwarzenberg’s  plan  was  that  Giulai’s 
Austrians  should  push  down  the  left  bank  of  the  Elster  from 
Markranstadt  on  Lindenau,  with  the  twofold  object  of  getting 
into  touch  with  the  Army  of  Silesia,  and  securing  the  great 
road  from  Leipzig  by  Liitzen  and  Erfurt  to  Mayence,  the  road 
along  which  the  French  must  retire  if  defeated.  On  Giulai’s  right 
the  Austrians  of  Merveldt  and  Alois  Lichtenstein  were  to  push 
forward  between  the  Elster  and  the  Pleisse,  to  cross  the  latter 
river  at  Connewitz  and  turn  the  French  right  flank,  some  38,000 
men  being  in  all  allotted  to  these  tasks.  The  rest  of  the  Army 
of  Bohemia  stretched  from  the  Pleisse  to  the  Kolmberg,  Kleist’s 
Prussians  (30,000)  being  next  the  river  and  opposite  Mark  Klee- 
berg,  Eugene  of  Wiirtemberg  at  Gossa  opposite  Wachau,  Gort- 
schakoff  beyond  him  opposing  Lauriston,  the  Austrians  of  Klenau 
(25,000)  on  the  right  again.  In  reserve  were  the  Russian  and 
Prussian  Guards,  the  whole  force  being  over  130,000.  The  first 
stages  of  the  day’s  fighting  went  somewhat  in  favour  of  the  Allies, 
who  forced  the  French  to  give  ground,  though  they  failed  to  carry 
the  villages,  to  which  Victor,  Poniatowski  and  Lauriston  clung 
with  stubborn  determination.  About  midday  the  Emperor  had 
all  ready  for  a  counter-attack.  Macdonald  replaced  Augereau 
on  the  left,  and  the  IXth  Corps  pushed  across  to  the  Pleisse  to 
fall  into  line  between  the  Poles  and  Victor;  the  Young  Guard 
supported  Lauriston,  Drouet  massed  a  great  batterynear  Wachau, 
and  Murat  collected  all  the  available  cavalry  in  order  to  hurl 
them  on  the  Allied  centre. 

For  a  time  all  went  well.  Macdonald  with  Mortier  and  some 
of  the  Young  Guard  supporting  him  stormed  the  Kolmberg  and 
drove  Klenau  back  by  threatening  his  right  flank :  on  the  other 
wing  Augereau  pushed  forward  to  Crostewitz  and  wrested  it 
from  Kleist,  Victor  aided  by  two  divisions  of  the  Young  Guard 
under  Oudinot  stormed  Auenhayn  ;  only  at  Giildengossa  did 
the  Allies  manage  to  hold  the  French  at  bay,  and  there  Gort- 
schakoff  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in  repulsing  Lauriston. 
About  three  o’clock  Murat  delivered  his  great  charge,  launching 


1813]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  III— LEIPZIG  625 


some  12,000  horsemen  on  the  Allied  batteries  near  Giildengossa, 
where  there  was  a  gap  between  Eugene  of  Wiirtemberg’s  right 
and  Gortschakoffs  left  only  filled  by  a  few  Russian  cavalry. 
The  French  squadrons  reached  and  captured  the  guns,  but 
the  timely  arrival  of  the  Allied  reserves  saved  the  day.  The 
Austrian  Reserve  came  up  from  Zobigker,  assisted  Kleist  to 
make  head  against  Augereau  and  even  to  regain  lost  ground. 
Latour-Maubourg  was  wounded,  and  the  French  cavalry,  their 
horses  spent  by  their  charge,  failed  to  press  the  advantage  they 
had  gained,  wavered  and  finally  gave  way  before  the  attacks  of 
the  cavalry  of  the  Russian  and  Prussian  Guards.  A  Russian 
Grenadier  division  came  to  Eugene’s  aid  and,  after  a  stubborn 
contest,  retook  Auenhayn  and  forced  Victor  to  retreat,  while 
Klenau,  rallying  his  corps,  managed  to  hold  Macdonald  in  check 
and  prevent  him  executing  the  flanking  movement  in  which  he 
had  not  received  the  expected  assistance  of  Ney’s  corps. 

Thus  all  along  the  line  the  French  had  to  recoil,  and  evening 
found  them  in  the  positions  they  had  occupied  in  the  morning, 
reduced  in  numbers  and  much  exhausted.  The  timely  inter¬ 
vention  of  the  Austrian  Reserve  had  been  the  decisive  point  in 
the  engagement,  and  had  prevented  Napoleon  from  gaining  the 
victory  which  had  seemed  in  his  grasp.  But  the  Army  of 
Silesia  also  had  had  an  important  influence  over  the  action  to 
the  South  of  Leipzig,  for  it  was  its  pressure  on  the  French 
to  the  North  of  the  city  which  had  prevented  the  expected 
supports  from  that  quarter  from  joining  in  Macdonald’s  turning 
movement  by  Seiffertshayn. 

The  command  of  the  French  forces  in  this  quarter  had  been 
entrusted  to  Marshal  Ney,  who  had  under  him  Bertrand,  Mar- 
mont,  Arrighi’s  cavalry,  and,  when  they  should  arrive,  his  own 
corps,  now  under  Souham,  and  that  of  Reynier.  But  the  Emperor 
was  so  far  from  anticipating  any  attack  by  the  Army  of  Silesia 
that  he  had  ordered  Marmont  to  move  to  the  assistance  of 
Lauriston,  an  order  Marmont  was  unable  to  fulfil  because  he 
found  himself  attacked  by  the  Army  of  Silesia,  and  spent  the  rest 
of  the  day  in  a  desperate  struggle  for  the  villages  of  Mockern 
and  Widderitsch.  In  like  manner  Bertrand’s  corps,  which  Ney 
despatched  to  Liebertwolkwitz  in  place  of  Marmont’s,  had  to  be 
diverted  elsewhere  before  it  could  reach  the  Southern  scene  of 
action,  for  Giulai  was  pressing  in  on  Lindenau,  and  threatened 
to  close  the  French  line  of  retreat.  Souham  also  started  to 
40 


626  GERMANY'  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


support  Macdonald  but  never  got  into  action,  being  recalled  to 
the  North  of  the  city  to  succour  the  hard-pressed  Marmont,  so 
that  he  spent  the  day  in  fruitless  countermarches  between  one 
battlefield  and  the  other,  as  d’Erlon  was  to  do  on  the  day  of 
Ligny. 

Meanwhile  Marmont  was  very  hard  pressed.  His  left 
rested  on  Mockern  and  the  Elster,  in  front  of  his  centre  he 
held  Lindenthal,  his  right  was  at  Widderitsch.  With  some 
20,000  men  available  he  had  to  face  treble  his  numbers,  for 
the  whole  Army  of  Silesia  attacked  him :  but  his  troops  were 
of  better  quality  than  most  of  the  French,  17  of  his  42 
battalions  being  Marines.  Yorck  assailed  Mockern;  Sacken 
carried  Lindenthal  and  came  up  in  support  of  Yorck ;  Langeron 
attacked  Widderitsch  and  carried  it,  only  to  lose  it  again 
when  the  belated  third  division  of  the  III rd  Corps  arrived 
from  Dliben  and  succoured  Marmont’s  right.  The  fighting 
on  this  side  was  about  the  most  obstinate  of  the  day.  Mockern 
and  Widderitsch  were  taken  and  retaken  repeatedly.  Nightfall 
found  Marmont  actually  in  possession  of  Mockern  ;  but  his  corps 
had  suffered  so  heavily  and  been  so  much  reduced,  that  under 
cover  of  darkness  he  fell  back  over  the  Parthe,  having  lost  8000 
men  and  53  guns  which  he  could  not  remove. 

Indeed  it  was  only  to  the  South-West  that  the  French  had 
gained  any  real  advantage.  Hampered  by  the  difficulties  of 
the  ground  in  which  they  were  operating,  Merveldt  and  Lichten¬ 
stein  had  achieved  nothing  and  had  failed  to  cross  the  Pleisse ; 
while  Bertrand  not  only  recovered  Lindenau,  to  which  Giulai 
had  penetrated,  but  by  driving  the  Austrians  back  as  far  as 
Klein  Zschocher  kept  open  the  line  of  retreat. 

October  17th  saw  but  little  fighting.  Both  sides  were  spent 
by  their  exertions;  the  French  had  lost  over  25,000  men,  the 
Allies  at  least  half  as  many  again,  so  that  they  had  good  reason 
to  wait,  for  every  hour  brought  their  reinforcements  nearer. 
Colloredo’s  Austrians  reached  Crobern  that  evening,  Bennigsen 
and  the  Russian  Army  of  Reserve  were  not  far  behind,  and  the 
60,000  men  of  the  Army  of  the  North  came  up  to  Breitenau  in 
the  course  of  the  day.  This  force,  indeed,  might  have  taken  part 
in  the  fighting  of  the  16th  had  Bernadotte  displayed  rather  more 
eagerness  for  battle ; 1  but  Sir  Charles  Stewart’s  entreaties  had 
not  availed  to  move  the  Crown  Prince  forward  from  Halle. 

1  Cf.  Cathcart,  War  of  1812-1813,  PP*  3 !4— 3 1 S. 


1813]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  III— LEIPZIG  627 


The  inaction  of  the  Allies  was  not  turned  to  good  account  by 
Napoleon.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  after  the  drawn 
battle  of  the  16th,  he  should  have  endeavoured  to  extricate 
himself  from  his  dangerous  position  before  the  net  closed  in 
completely  on  him.  He  does  seem  to  have  contemplated  a 
retreat,  but  did  nothing  to  prepare  for  it,  an  omission  which 
was  to  cost  his  army  dear  two  days  later.  All  that  the 
Emperor  did  was  to  draw  the  army  in  nearer  to  Leipzig, 
so  that  on  the  morning  of  the  18th  their  positions  formed  a 
semicircle  from  the  Elster  at  Dolitz,  where  Poniatowski  and 
Augereau  stood,  through  Probstheida,  held  by  Victor,  Stotteritz 
and  Molkau,  defended  by  Macdonald,  Paunsdorf  where 
Reynier  took  post  on  arriving  from  Diiben,  to  the  Parthe  at 
Schonfeld  which  Souham  held.  Marmont  covered  the  left  flank 
by  taking  post  behind  the  Parthe,  Lauriston  was  in  second  line 
behind  Victor  and  Macdonald,  the  cavalry  and  the  Guards 
formed  a  general  reserve,  while  Bertrand  was  thrust  out  along 
the  road  to  Weissenfels  to  secure  the  defile  of  Kosen. 

Meanwhile  the  Allies  had  made  their  dispositions  for  the 
attack.  Schwarzenberg  is  at  least  open  to  criticism  for  not 
having  done  more  to  intercept  the  Emperor’s  line  of  retreat 
Westward ;  what  he  seems  to  have  feared  most  was  that 
Napoleon  would  make  a  desperate  attempt  to  break  out 
through  the  circle  which  was  closing  in  on  him  in  the  direction 
of  the  Elbe,  through  the  gap  in  the  Allied  line  which  Bernadotte 
was  to  close  with  the  Army  of  the  North.  The  main  attack  thus 
took  the  shape  of  an  advance  of  the  Army  of  Bohemia  and 
Bennigsen’s  reserves  in  three  columns  against  the  French  right 
wing.  Giulai  so  far  from  being  strongly  reinforced,  was  actually 
called  upon  to  send  back  one  of  his  divisions  from  the  West  of 
the  Elster  to  reinforce  the  attack  on  Lossnig. 

It  was  about  7  a.m.  that  the  attack  was  begun.  Hesse- 
Homburg’s  Austrians,  pressing  forward  along  the  right  bank  of  the 
Pleisse,  carried  Dolitz  and  Dosen  after  heavy  fighting  but  could 
not  wrest  Connewitz  from  the  Poles.  On  their  right  Kleist  and 
Wittgenstein  assailed  Probstheida;  but  Victor  would  not  be 
dislodged  and  repulsed  repeated  attacks.  The  third  column 
under  Klenau,  which  attempted  to  wrest  Holzhausen  from 
Macdonald,  had  at  first  little  success ;  but  about  2  p.m.  Bennig- 
sen  came  up  to  his  help  and  Holzhausen  was  carried,  though 
even  then  their  efforts  to  take  Stotteritz  were  less  fortunate,  and 


628  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 

% 

Bennigsen,  swerving  more  to  his  right  in  order  to  get  into  touch 
with  the  Army  of  the  North,  could  not  get  beyond  Engelsdorf 
for  Reynier’s  Saxons,  who  formed  the  right  of  the  force  with 
which  Ney  was  prepared  to  oppose  Bernadotte,  held  on  firmly 
to  Molkau  and  Paunsdorf.  Thus  the  attack  of  the  Army  of 
Bohemia  came  to  more  or  less  of  a  standstill,  the  strong 
and  stoutly  defended  position  of  Stotteritz-Probstheida,  with 
Lauriston  and  much  reserve  artillery  supporting  its  defenders, 
defying  their  assaults.  Both  these  villages  remained  in  French 
hands  till  nightfall,  Kleist  and  Wittgenstein  suffering  heavily 
in  their  unsuccessful  attempts  on  Probstheida,  while  Klenau 
and  Ziethen’s  Prussians,  less  closely  engaged,  lost  fewer  men 
but  achieved  no  more  against  Macdonald. 

But  meanwhile  the  battle  was  being  decided  elsewhere.  Not, 
indeed,  by  Bliicher,  who  had  detached  Langeron  to  co-operate 
with  Bernadotte,  and  thus  had  only  Yorck  and  Sacken  with 
whom  to  engage  Marmont.  He  was  successful  in  driving  in 
the  French  outposts  from  Gohlis  and  Pfaffendorf,  but  their  main 
position  behind  the  Parthe  proved  too  much  for  him :  at  one 
time  he  managed  to  force  a  passage,  and  even  to  gain  possession 
of  Reudnitz,  but  the  Emperor  sent  up  reinforcements  and 
recovered  the  lost  ground.  It  was  the  arrival  of  the  Army 
of  the  North  which  really  decided  the  battle.  About  midday 
Bernadotte’s  vanguard  reached  Taucha  and  got  into  touch  with 
Langeron,  who  had  crossed  the  Parthe  at  Mockau  to  assist  the 
Crown  Prince’s  operations.  Langeron  then  advanced  against 
Ney’s  left  at  Schonfeld,  while  Winzingerode  pushed  across  to 
Paunsdorf  to  establish  communications  with  Bennigsen,  thus 
closing  the  gap  between  the  left  of  the  Army  of  Silesia  and  the 
right  of  that  of  Bohemia. 

Encouraged  by  the  prospect  of  the  arrival  of  the  Army  of  the 
North,  Bennigsen’s  troops  resumed  their  attacks  on  Reynier’s 
position  at  Molkau  and  Paunsdorf.  As  Bubna’s  Austrians 
also  pressed  forward,  the  troops  opposed  to  them,  instead  of 
resisting  their  advance,  came  over  in  a  body  and  threw  in  their 
lot  with  the  Allies.  These  deserters  were  the  Saxons,  who 
formed  so  large  a  part  of  Reynier’s  corps,  and  their  defection 
was  followed  by  that  of  a  Wlirtemberg  cavalry  brigade  nearly 
1 500  strong.  Even  apart  from  the  moral  effect  on  the  Allies 
and  on  the  French  alike  of  so  striking  an  incident,  so  public  a 
proclamation  of  Napoleon’s  failure  to  retain  the  fidelity  of  his 


1813]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  III— LEIPZIG  629 


allies,  the  desertion  of  the  Saxons  was  of  great  immediate  and 
practical  importance,  for  Reynier’s  remaining  division  gave  way 
before  Bubna’s  attack,  and  the  Austrians  occupied  Paunsdorf. 
To  the  success  of  this  attack  the  presence  with  Winzingerode’s 
cavalry  of  the  one  unit  which  represented  England  in  this  great 
“  battle  of  the  nations  ”  contributed  appreciably.  Captain 
Bogue’s  rocket-troop  of  the  Royal  Artillery  played  a  most 
effective  part  in  aiding  Bubna’s  advance,  its  novel  missiles  doing 
much  execution  and  creating  quite  a  sensation. 

Ney  hastened  to  Reynier’s  assistance  with  such  reserves  as 
he  had  at  hand  and  temporarily  recovered  Paunsdorf ;  but  before 
the  steady  pressure  of  the  advance  of  the  Army  of  the  North 
even  Ney  had  to  recoil  and  to  content  himself  with  extricating 
Reynier’s  remnant.  In  vain  Nansouty  brought  the  cavalry  of 
the  Guard  to  Ney’s  help.  Biilow’s  arrival  forced  Ney  back  on 
Reudnitz,  and  Langeron  returning  to  the  attack  after  several 
repulses  at  last  wrested  Schonfeld  from  its  defenders.  Thus  all 
round  the  line  the  French  were  being  pressed  back  into  Leipzig  ; 
and  even  Napoleon  could  no  longer  conceal  from  himself  the 
fact  that  retreat  was  inevitable.  Fortunately  for  him  the  road 
to  the  West  still  presented  a  way  of  escape  ;  for  Giulai,  his  force 
reduced  to  one  division  by  the  recall  of  the  second  to  succour 
Hesse-Homburg,  had  been  unable  to  hold  his  own  against 
Mortier  and  two  divisions  of  the  Young  Guard,  who  had  thrust 
him  aside  and  cleared  the  road  to  France. 

But  hardly  any  preparations  had  been  made  for  a  retreat. 
No  extra  bridges  had  been  laid  over  the  Elster  and  Pleisse,  the 
troops  were  in  great  disorder  and  disorganisation,  and  the  utmost 
confusion  prevailed.  Had  Schwarzenberg  made  better  arrange¬ 
ments  for  hindering  the  retreat,  the  entire  French  army  might 
have  been  cut  off.  As  it  was,  the  orders  intended  for  Bianchi, 
who  had  replaced  Hesse-Homburg,  never  reached  him,  and  his 
column  instead  of  crossing  the  Elster  and  supporting  Giulai 
remained  near  Leipzig  on  the  19th.  Bliicher  had  started  Yorck, 
whose  men  had  been  in  reserve  all  the  1 8th,  off  towards  the 
Unstrutt  on  the  evening  of  that  day  ;  but  he  had  to  make  a  detour 
by  Halle,  and  only  came  up  with  the  rear  of  the  French  as  they 
were  crossing  at  Freiburg  on  the  22nd,  while  Bertrand  was  able 
to  keep  Maurice  Lichtenstein  and  Giulai  at  bay  near  Kosen. 
A  very  large  number  of  prisoners  were  certainly  taken  by  the 
Allies,  but  this  was  due  to  Napoleon’s  neglect  to  make  proper 


630  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


arrangements  for  the  retreat  and  to  the  premature  destruction 
of  the  bridges  over  the  Elster,  rather  than  to  the  efforts  of  the 
Allies.  They  devoted  themselves  on  the  morning  of  the  19th 
to  assaulting  the  various  gates  of  the  city,  which  were  stoutly 
defended  by  the  contingents  of  the  vassal  states,  the  Poles,  the 
Italians,  the  handful  of  Spaniards,  the  Illyrians,  the  Dutch- 
Belgians,  the  Swiss,  and  such  Germans  as  had  not  yet  deserted, 
while  the  French  were  filing  out  of  the  city  Westward.  In  all 
about  80,000  troops  managed  to  make  their  way  to  Markran- 
stadt  by  the  evening  of  the  19th;  but  the  Allies  secured  with 
the  city  of  Leipzig  not  less  than  250  guns  and  50,000  prisoners, 
of  whom  over  20,000  were  wounded.  In  killed  and  wounded 
they  had  themselves  probably  lost  almost  as  heavily  as  the 
French;1  but  the  capture  of  so  large  a  number  of  prisoners 
made  all  the  difference,  reducing  the  Grand  Army  to  less  than 
half  of  its  strength  before  the  battle. 

There  was  no  thought  now  among  the  French  of  a  stand 
East  of  the  Rhine.  The  Grand  Army  had  one  object  only,  to 
place  that  river  between  themselves  and  their  enemies :  only 
behind  its  shelter  could  they  feel  safe,  there  only  could  they  find 
reinforcements  and  succour.  Germany  was  lost  irrevocably  ;  for 
great  as  the  military  success  of  the  Allies  had  been,  that  was 
nothing  when  compared  with  the  political  results  of  Leipzig.  It 
completed  the  collapse  of  the  tottering  Confederation  of  the 
Rhine.  The  minor  states  hastened  to  follow  the  lead  of  Bavaria. 
French  rule  disappeared  from  Berg  and  from  Westphalia  amid 
an  outburst  of  popular  enthusiasm.  Benefits  were  forgotten 
in  the  general  hurry  to  be  rid  of  Napoleon’s  yoke.  The  general 
joy  at  the  overthrow  of  the  Emperor  found  expression  in  patriotic 
poems  and  songs,  notably  in  Arndt’s  demand  that  the  Rhine 
should  once  again  become  a  German  river.  Popular  feeling  ran 
high,  nationalist  sentiments  were  openly  expressed,  other  Liberal 
ideas  not  less  distasteful  to  Metternich  were  current  everywhere. 
He  saw  with  alarm  Germany  on  the  verge  of  being  thrown  into 
the  melting-pot  of  “  reconstruction  ” :  he  had  good  reason  to 
dread  the  turn  which  events  might  take  unless  something  were 
speedily  done  to  check  the  flow  of  the  tide.  There  were  two 
things  he  detested  with  about  equal  fervour :  Liberalism  and 
Nationalism.  By  admitting  Napoleon’s  vassals  to  terms  he 

1  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1806-1871,  i.,  gives  their  losses  as:  Austrians,  15,000; 
Prussians,  16,000;  Russians,  22,000,, 


LEIPZIG.  Oct.  16%  to  19^,1813. 


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r±r  French  positions  A  M.  Oct.  16. 

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EnyJ.  Mile. 


i  M  _poAt  i  cy  Oz-^vr^ '<^o8 . 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  III— LEIPZIG  631 


hoped  to  checkmate  both,  to  prevent  the  reconstruction  on 
Liberal  lines  which  he  was  determined  to  avoid.  His  hatred 
of  reconstruction  was  in  large  measure  inspired  by  his  dislike 
of  Prussia.  Reconstruction  must  involve  a  definite  settlement 
of  the  relation  between  Austria  and  Prussia,  and  Metternich  did 
not  intend  to  allow  this  to  come  to  pass.  Hence  he  seized  the 
earliest  possible  opportunity  of  coming  to  terms  with  the  South 
German  Princes :  .  Frederick  I  of  Wiirtemberg  was  no  less 
anxious  to  be  admitted  to  terms,  hoping  thus  to  secure  the  gains 
he  had  made  by  Napoleon’s  help  by  bringing  them  under  the 
shelter  of  an  Austrian  recognition.  A  champion  of  particularism 
and  a  bitter  enemy  of  German  nationalism,  he  desired  to  escape 
the  fate  which  had  befallen  Saxony  and  which  was  threatening 
his  dominions,  of  being  seized  and  administered  by  the  Allies 
as  a  “  common  possession.”  The  Treaty  of  Fulda  (Nov.  2nd) 
saved  Wiirtemberg  from  being  treated  in  this  way,  from  being 
taxed  and  requisitioned  to  the  limits  of  its  capacity  to  defray 
the  expenses  of  the  Allies.  Wiirtemberg,  like  Bavaria,  not 
only  received  official  sanction  for  her  existence,  but  promised  to 
send  a  contingent  of  12,000  men  to  assist  Austria.  Her  action 
was  imitated  by  Baden,  by  Nassau,  by  the  Saxon  Duchies  and 
by  Hesse-Darmstadt.  The  last-named  concluded  a  military 
convention  with  Austria  (Nov.  2nd)  which  three  weeks  later  was 
expanded  into  a  definite  treaty  of  alliance.  Even  more  effective 
as  a  check  on  the  popular  movement  and  the  nationalist  spirit 
than  the  recognition  of  these  states  which  owed  so  much  to 
Napoleon  and  had  been  his  vassals  so  long,  was  the  recall  of 
the  old  rulers,  whose  dominions  had  gone  to  make  up  those 
creations  of  Napoleon’s  which  were  bound  to  fall  with  him. 
To  Brunswick,  Electoral  Hesse,  Hanover  and  Oldenburg  their 
dispossessed  sovereigns  came  back  in  the  spirit  of  the  most 
uncompromising  emigre ,  determined  to  restore  the  old  regime 
and  as  far  as  possible  to  obliterate  the  immediate  past,  to  slur 
over  the  reforms  effected  in  their  absence  and  which  were  in  so 
strong  a  contrast  to  their  own  negligent  rule. 

But  the  immediate  task  of  the  Allies  was  not  to  reconstitute 
Germany,  but  to  complete  the  work  of  Leipzig.  There  were  two 
things  to  be  done  :  Napoleon  must  be  pursued,  cut  off  if  possible, 
driven  over  the  Rhine  if  he  should  escape  capture ;  secondly,  the 
fortresses  still  held  by  his  troops  must  be  blockaded  or  taken. 
Klenau’s  Austrians  and  Bennigscn’s  Russians  had  therefore  to 


632  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1813 


be  left  on  the  Elbe  to  attend  to  the  French  strongholds  on  that 
river,  Dresden,  Torgau,  Magdeburg  and  Wittenberg;  Kleist’s 
Prussians  with  the  assistance  of  Winzingerode’s  Russians  took 
charge  of  Erfurt ;  Bernadotte  moved  North  to  assist  Wallmoden 
against  Davout  and  the  Danes.  Wallmoden,  encouraged  by  his 
success  at  the  Gohrde,  had  begun  to  pass  his  troops  over  to  the 
left  bank  of  the  Elbe  soon  after  that  action,  and  had  pushed 
them  forward  to  Bremen  and  Hanover,  stirring  up  insurrections 
in  those  districts,  with  the  result  that  Davout  had  been  quite  cut 
off  from  his  master.  Bernadotte’s  arrival  compelled  the  Marshal 
to  retire  into  Hamburg,  where  he  maintained  himself  for  the  rest 
of  the  war,  while  the  Danes,  driven  back  into  Holstein  and  pur¬ 
sued  by  Wallmoden,  were  forced  to  conclude  the  Treaty  of  Kiel 
in  January  1814.  By  that  time  several  of  the  fortresses  had 
fallen,  Dresden  and  Torgau  having  succumbed  early  in  November, 
Stettin,  Wittenberg  and  Dantzic  before  the  end  of  the  year,  and 
the  garrisons  of  the  remainder,  closely  beset  by  the  Army  of  the 
North,  now  broken  up,  and  by  the  Landwehr ,  who  came  forward 
in  great  numbers,  were  condemned  to  a  useless  inactivity. 

In  the  other  part  of  their  task,  the  interception  and  capture 
of  the  retreating  Grand  Army,  the  Allies  were  less  successful. 
Napoleon  had  reached  Weissenfels  on  the  evening  of  October 
20th  and  had  hastened  to  cross  to  the  left  bank  of  the  Saale, 
thus  leaving  the  main  road  up  the  right  bank  by  Naumburg  for 
fear  that  the  difficulties  of  getting  through  the  narrow  defile  of 
Kosen  would  afford  opportunities  to  his  enemy.  The  change  of 
road  took  the  French  through  hilly  country,  and  so  far  delayed 
them  that  Yorck  caught  up  their  rearguard  just  as  the  main 
body  had  got  across  the  Unstrutt,  and  inflicted  some  loss  on  it. 
However,  even  so  the  Prussians  failed  to  check  the  retreat ;  and 
as  Bertrand  kept  Lichtenstein  and  Giulai  at  bay  at  Kosen,  the 
relics  of  the  Grand  Army  regained  the  high  road  at  Buttelstadt 
and  arrived  at  Erfurt  in  safety  on  October  23rd.  Here  a  short 
stay  was  made,  and  Napoleon  was  able  to  do  something  to  refit 
and  reorganise  his  shattered  army.  But  advantageous  as  the 
position  of  Erfurt  would  have  been  for  a  stand  had  Napoleon 
adopted  it  earlier  when  his  army  was  still  intact,  the  time  for 
a  stand  was  past:  not  even  with  the  Harz  Mountains  to  cover 
his  left  and  the  Thuringian  Forest  to  protect  his  right,1  did 
he  contemplate  another  action.  With  Southern  Germany  rising 

1  Cf.  Cathcart,  pp.  274-276, 


SILESIA,  SAXONY  &  BOHEMIA  To  illustrate  the  Silesian  Wars  and  War  of  Liberation. 


0  -  c\Kunersdorf 


0Dennewitz 


.  Olmt 

1  \J' 


— - 


?7(i,  >'-S-s 


\Budweis 


<  ~ 


SCALE  L. 


J  ENGLISH  MILES 


1 8 1 3]  THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION,  III— LEIPZIG  633 


against  him  in  his  rear,  with  the  North-West  seething  with 
hostility,  with  the  structure  he  had  raised  collapsing  around 
him,  and  the  main  body  of  the  Allies  in  pursuit,  he  had  no 
option  but  to  fall  back,  and  on  October  25th  he  resumed  his 
retreat  towards  Frankfort. 

The  Allies  were  moving  in  two  main  bodies,  Schwarzenberg 
taking  the  road  by  Jena  on  Weimar,  Bliicher  with  Langeron 
and  Yorck  moving  by  Merseburg  and  Freiburg  on  Langensalza. 
But  for  the  intercepting  of  Napoleon  they  relied  mainly  on 
Wrede,  who  with  his  own  Bavarian  corps  and  the  Austrians 
of  Prince  Reuss  had  come  up  from  Anspach  by  Wurzburg  to 
Hanau  (Oct.  28th)  and  was  blocking  the  high  road  to  France. 
Expecting  that  Wrede’s  intervention  would  force  the  French  to 
turn  aside  and  seek  to  regain  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine  at 
Coblence,  Bliicher  changed  his  course  and  made  for  Giessen  and 
Wetzlar,  thus  losing  touch  with  the  French.  His  move  enabled 
Napoleon  to  win  a  last  victory  on  German  soil.  On  October  30th 
the  French  vanguard  found  Wrede’s  40,000  men  drawn  up  on 
the  North  bank  of  the  Kinzig,  in  front  of  Hanau,  barring  their 
road  to  France.  There  was  some  sharp  and  even  fighting,  but 
finally  a  great  attack  by  all  the  cavalry  that  Nansouty  and 
Sebastiani  could  collect  was  directed  against  Wrede’s  left,  the 
way  having  been  paved  for  it  by  Drouet,  who  massed  a  great 
battery  against  that  point.  The  Allied  flank  was  beaten  in  and 
the  road  cleared,  Wrede’s  men  retiring  across  the  Kinzig.  Next 
day  Napoleon  attacked  them  in  their  new  position,  employing 
the  corps  of  Bertrand  and  Marmont,  which  fought  uncommonly 
well  considering  all  they  had  recently  been  through.  By  this 
means  he  occupied  Wrede’s  attention  and  gained  time  for  his 
rearguard,  the  Young  Guard  under  Oudinot,  to  get  past  Hanau, 
whereupon  the  rest  of  the  French  retired  also.  On  November 
2nd  the  columns  of  the  Grand  Army  were  trailing  safely  over 
the  Rhine  at  Mayence.  It  was  not  Wrede’s  fault  that  the 
Emperor  had  got  away.  The  pursuit  after  Leipzig  was  none 
too  well  managed,  though  a  little  more  energy  might  have  saved 
the  losses  of  the  next  year’s  campaign.  It  would  have  been  far 
better  to  send  every  available  sabre  and  bayonet  straight  after 
the  Grand  Army  rather  than  to  pay  so  much  attention  to 
reducing  fortresses,  whose  fate  was  but  a  secondary  affair.  But 
here,  as  always,  the  lack  of  an  effective  Commander-in-Chief 
hampered  the  operations  of  the  Allies. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 


1814  AND  THE  TREATY  OF  PARIS 

THUS  at  last  was  Germany  freed  from  Napoleon’s  rule;  but, 
successful  as  the  efforts  of  the  Allies  had  been,  1813  had 
no  more  ended  the  struggle  than  had  1812.  Just  as  the  advance 
into  Germany  had  been  needed  to  reap  the  fruits  of  the  repulse 
of  the  invasion  of  Russia,  so  the  liberation  of  Germany  could 
only  be  made  secure  by  following  up  the  expulsion  of  Napoleon 
from  German  soil.  For  the  man  whose  rule  was  founded  on 
victory  could  not  afford  to  acquiesce  in  defeat,  not  even  a  Leipzig 
would  induce  him  to  accept  the  highly  favourable  terms  on 
which  the  Allies  would  gladly  have  given  him  peace.  He  at 
least  had  not  had  enough  of  fighting,  though  France,  exhausted 
by  the  prodigious  efforts  she  had  made  in  response  to  his 
demands,  had  neither  the  capacity  nor  the  inclination  to  repeat 
her  useless  sacrifices.  Napoleon  hoped  that  the  prospect  of  in¬ 
vasion  would  produce  a  reaction  in  his  favour,  would  provoke  a 
popular  movement  against  the  foreigner  similar  to  that  of  1792; 
but  although  twelve  days  before  Napoleon  left  Leipzig  a  victori¬ 
ous  enemy  had  already  crossed  the  frontier  of  France,  Welling¬ 
ton’s  men  when  they  crossed  the  Bidassoa  (Oct.  6th  and  7th,  1813) 
found  themselves  among  a  population  who  displayed  nothing 
like  the  hostility  which  the  French  peasantry  had  shown  to 
the  Austrians  and  Prussians  twenty  years  before.  France  had 
begun  to  realise  that  Napoleon  was  making  her  fight  his 
battles  and  not  hers,  and  her  response  to  his  appeal  was  but 
half-hearted. 

The  campaign  of  1814  was  one  which  ought  never  to  have 
been  fought.  Politically,  France  had  nothing  to  gain  ;  from  the 
military  point  of  view  Napoleon  had  nothing  to  hope  for.  With 
barely  80,000  men  to  oppose  to  the  overwhelming  forces  of  the 
Allies  even  he  could  not  expect  to  win :  the  weight  of  numbers 
was  bound  to  crush  him ;  despite  the  marvellous  exhibition  of 
skill  and  resource  which  he  gave,  despite  the  repeated  blunders 


1 8 14]  1814  AND  THE  TREATY  OF  PARIS 


635 


of  his  enemies,  he  was  in  the  end  overpowered  by  numbers. 
That  he  persisted  in  fighting  was  largely  because  pride  and 
obstinacy  would  not  let  him  admit  defeat,  because  self-confi¬ 
dence  bade  him  expect  victory,  but  mainly  because,  not  without 
good  reason,  he  trusted  to  the  dissensions  of  his  enemies. 

That  there  was  no  small  divergence  between  the  views  of 
Austria  and  of  Prussia  Napoleon  was  well  aware.  He  knew 
that  Metternich’s  hostility  to  him  had  its  limits,  and  that  rather 
than  favour  anything  likely  to  provoke  a  Jacobinical  reaction, 
as,  for  example,  the  restoration  of  the  Bourbons,  the  Austrian 
minister  would  be  prepared  to  let  hhn  retain  the  throne  of 
France.  Indeed,  the  excellent  terms  offered  to  Napoleon  in 
November  1813,  the  so-called  “Proposals  of  Frankfort/’  may 
be  taken  as  embodying  the  views  of  Austria  rather  than  of  her 
allies.  To  give  France  the  Rhine,  the  Alps  and  the  Pyrenees 
as  her  boundaries  would  have  been  distasteful  to  England,  which 
much  disliked  leaving  Antwerp  and  all  Belgium  in  her  hands ; 
the  mere  restoration  of  the  former  rulers  in  Italy,  Holland  and 
Germany,  and  the  recognition  by  Napoleon  of  the  unconditional 
independence  of  Germany  and  Italy  would  have  been  far  from 
satisfying  the  desire  for  revenge  which  animated  Prussia  and 
Russia ;  but  the  Allies  agreed  to  the  offer,  and  it  was  from 
Napoleon  that  the  rejection  came.  He  demanded  instead  the 
fortresses  of  Wesel,  Kehl  and  Cassel,  a  kingdom  for  Jerome  in 
Germany,  and  compensation  in  Italy  for  Eugene,  who  would  be 
deprived  of  his  reversion  of  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Frankfort.  If 
Napoleon  had  wished  to  make  peace  impossible  he  could  hardly 
have  adopted  more  successful  means.  His  obstinacy  compelled 
the  Allies  to  subordinate  their  discords  to  the  one  thing  they 
had  in  common,  their  desire  to  compass  his  overthrow. 

But  though  resolved  not  to  let  the  fruits  of  their  victory 
escape  them,  the  Allies  found  some  difficulty  about  settling  on  a 
plan  of  campaign.  Radetzky  and  Gneisenau  advocated  an  im¬ 
mediate  invasion,  judging  that  it  would  be  better  to  undergo  the 
hardships  of  a  winter  campaign  than  to  give  Napoleon  time  to 
build  up  a  new  army.  This  was  opposed  by  von  Knesebeck, 
who  was  in  great  favour  with  the  King  of  Prussia,  and  who  with 
the  support  of  his  master  and  of  the  Austrian  von  Duka  declared 
that  the  fortresses  on  the  Rhine  must  be  taken  before  an  invasion 
could  be  attempted.  Schwarzenberg,  however,  so  far  departed 
from  his  usual  policy  as  to  reject  this  cautious  plan  and  to 


636  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1814 


declare  for  an  advance.  He  did  not,  however,  adopt  Gneisenau’s 
suggestion  that  the  Army  of  Silesia  with  part  of  that  of 
the  North  should  invade  France  through  Belgium,  while  the 
Army  of  Bohemia  moved  on  Paris  by  Mayence  and  Metz.  The 
plan  which  Schwarzenberg  and  Radetzky  preferred  was  that  the 
Army  of  Bohemia  should  move  through  Switzerland,  thereby 
turning  the  lines  of  the  Rhine  and  Vosges,  and  descend  on  Paris 
from  the  plateau  of  Langres,  a  country  which  had  long  been 
spared  the  horrors  of  war  and  was  therefore  well  adapted  to 
support  and  supply  an  advancing  army.  Bliicher  with  the  Army 
of  Silesia  and  part  of  that  of  the  North  was  to  move  due  West 
from  the  Middle  Rhine,  crossing  the  river  between  Mannheim 
and  Coblence.  The  rest  of  the  Army  of  the  North  was  either 
operating  against  Davout  under  Bernadotte  or  blockading  the 
fortresses  the  Allies  were  leaving  untaken  in  their  rear,  or  assist¬ 
ing  Sir  Thomas  Graham  and  an  English  corps  of  some  8000 
men  to  expel  the  French  from  Holland.1 

The  Allies  had  not  less  than  300,000  men  available  for  the 
invasion.  Their  main  army  amounted  to  90,000  Austrians,2 
50,000  Russians,3  29,000  Bavarians  under  Wrede,  a  corps  from 
Wiirtemberg  14,000  strong,  and  the  6000  men  of  the  Prussian 
Guards,  in  all  not  far  short  of  over  200,000  men.  Bliicher  had 
Yorck’s  Prussian  corps  and  the  Russians  of  Sacken  and  Lan- 
geron,  in  all  about  80,000,  while  a  reserve  army  was  being 
collected  in  South  Germany  from  the  states  whose  contingents 
only  a  year  before  had  been  flocking  to  Napoleon’s  banner: 
it  included  19,000  Hessians  from  Cassel,  the  so-called  IVth 
“German  League  Corps,”  9000  from  Nassau,  Berg,  Waldeck 
and  other  minor  states  (Vth  Corps),  a  Hesse-Darmstadt  corps 
(the  Vlth)  brought  up  to  10,000  by  contingents  from  Wurz¬ 
burg,  Reuss  and  Frankfort,  and  one  from  Baden  (the  VII Ith)  of 
10,000  men.  When  one  adds  to  these  numbers  the  forces  in  the 
Netherlands,  those  left  behind  in  Germany,  the  Austrian  Army 
of  Italy  which  was  steadily  wresting  that  peninsula  from  its 
Viceroy,  Eugene,  not  forgetting  the  90,000  British  and  Portu¬ 
guese  at  whose  head  Wellington  was  pushing  forward  irresistibly 
through  the  South-West  of  France,  one  has  some  conception  of 
the  mighty  effort  needed  to  free  Europe  from  Napoleon’s 

1  Cf.  Der  Feldzug  1814  in  Frankreich ,  by  Lieutenant-General  von  Janson. 

2  4  corps  and  2  light  divisions. 

3  Their  Guards  and  2  corps  under  Wittgenstein  and  Barclay  de  Tolly, 


i8i4]  1814  AND  THE  TREATY  OF  PARIS 


637 


dominion.  The  forces  the  Grand  Alliance  had  put  into  the  field 
a  century  earlier  to  repel  the  aggressions  of  Louis  XIV  seem 
insignificant  in  comparison. 

To  oppose  them  Napoleon  had  a  field-force  of  little  more 
than  a  quarter  of  the  total  available  for  the  invasion.  His  Guard, 
reorganised  in  three  corps  under  Ney,  Oudinot  and  Mortier, 
mustered  35,000;  the  relics  of  the  Grand  Army  provided  some 
12,000  cavalry  and  four  skeleton  corps  of  infantry  amounting 
to  23,000.  Behind  these  were  forming  new  battalions  of  con¬ 
scripts,  National  Guards  and  others,  most  of  which  were  drawn 
into  the  fighting  line  as  the  campaign  proceeded,  but  which  were 
not  available  when  the  invasion  began. 

The  main  interest  of  the  campaign  of  1814  lies  in  a  subject 
which  does  not  call  for  very  detailed  treatment  here,  the  marvel¬ 
lous  skill  with  which  Napoleon  kept  the  overwhelming  forces  of 
his  enemies  at  bay.  The  proceedings  of  the  Allies,  their  quarrels, 
mistakes  and  failures,  need  rather  more  attention,  and  to  them 
must  partly  be  attributed  Napoleon’s  success  in  maintaining  the 
unequal  struggle  so  long.  As  the  armies  of  the  Allies  neared 
the  frontier  of  France  their  fear  of  Napoleon,  the  common 
interest  which  had  hitherto  held  them  together,  began  to  give 
place  to  hopes  of  individual  advantages  to  be  gained  by  his  over¬ 
throw  ;  the  cohesion  of  the  Coalition  began  to  show  signs  of 
weakening,  differences  of  aim  to  exercise  their  influence  over 
the  actions  of  the  Allies. 

It  was  at  the  end  of  December  that  the  Austrians 
began  their  march  through  Switzerland;  by  January  18th  the 
Allied  Headquarters  reached  Langres  and  began  descending 
the  valleys  of  the  Seine,  Aube  and  Marne:  Wrede  had  turned 
aside  to  Alsace  to  secure  that  province  with  the  assistance 
of  the  Vlth  and  VUIth  German  League  Corps.  Bliicher 
meanwhile  having  detached  part  of  Yorck’s  corps  to  seize 
Luxembourg,  Metz  and  Thionville,  and  left  Langeron  to 
besiege  Mayence,  had  found  himself  too  weak  to  do  much  in¬ 
dependently,  and  was  moving  Southward  to  gain  touch  with  the 
main  army.  This  exposed  him  to  Napoleon,  and  on  January 
29th  the  Emperor,  who  had  concentrated  33,000  men  at  Vitry 
on  the  25th,  fell  on  the  Prussian  commander  at  Brienne  sur  Aube 
and  drove  him  back  up  the  river.  Following  in  pursuit,  Napoleon 
again  engaged  the  Prussians  at  La  Rothiere  (Feb.  1st).  The 
battle  might  have  gone  against  them  had  not  an  Austrian 


640  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1814 


retired  to  Craonne.  Driven  thence  by  Napoleon’s  attacks 
(March  7th),  they  fell  back  to  Laon,  where  Napoleon  again 
assailed  them  two  days  later.  This  time  he  was  less  suc¬ 
cessful.  On  the  left,  where  he  himself  opposed  Biilow  and 
Winzingerode,  the  French  carried  the  village  of  Ardon  but 
could  get  little  farther.  Marmont  on  the  right  drove  Yorck 
and  Kleist  back  some  way,  but  was  checked  by  Langeron 
and  Sacken,  who  reinforced  the  Prussians.  The  day  thus  ended 
indecisively ;  but  in  the  night  Ziethen’s  cavalry  surprised 
Marmont’s  bivouacs,  and  thus  threatened  Napoleon’s  retreat  to 
Craonne.  But  the  advantage  was  not  followed  up.  Bliicher 
was  incapacitated  by  illness,  and  Gneisenau,  who  succeeded  to 
the  command,  seems  to  have  lost  his  head.  He  displayed  an 
extraordinary  vacillation  and  confusion,  and  with  the  Prussian 
army  thus  relapsing  into  inaction  Napoleon  was  able  to  slip 
away  unpursued  under  cover  of  an  attack  on  Billow’s  corps, 
and  to  hurry  back  to  the  Seine  to  meet  Schwarzenberg’s  renewed 
advance.  Unimpeded  by  the  Army  of  the  North,  which  remained 
stationary  on  the  Aisne  for  over  a  week,  with  Bliicher  ill  and 
Yorck  and  Gneisenau  at  furious  feud,  Napoleon  moved  by 
Rheims,  where  he  surprised  and  routed  St.  Priest’s  Russians 
(March  13th),  and  La  Fere  Champenoise  (March  18th)  to  the 
Aube,  joined  Macdonald,  who  was  withstanding  Schwarzenberg’s 
renewed  advance  with  barely  30,000  men  (March  20th),  and  on 
the  2 1st  delivered  an  attack  on  the  Allies  at  Arcis  sur  Aube. 
Including  the  troops  he  had  brought  from  Rheims,  a  corps  of 
10,000  which  had  joined  him  from  Paris  and  Macdonald’s  com¬ 
mand,  the  Emperor  had  little  more  than  50,000  men,  the  Allies 
being  enormously  superior,  as  Schwarzenberg  was  concentrating 
all  his  outlying  divisions.  This  superiority  in  numbers  gave  the 
Allies  the  victory  in  what  was  in  some  ways  the  decisive  battle 
of  the  campaign.  Had  Schwarzenberg  been  beaten  there  can  be 
little  doubt  but  that  he  would  have  fallen  right  back  to  Langres, 
leaving  Bliicher  and  Biilow  in  the  lurch.  But  in  the  end  the 
French  were  badly  beaten.  Even  the  interior  position  could 
not  compensate  for  the  odds  against  them.  Wrede’s  Bavarians 
thrust  Ney  back  from  Torcy.  Giulai’s  Austrians  at  the  other 
end  of  the  line  drove  the  French  right  from  Vilette,  the 
Russians  in  the  centre  gained  ground  steadily,  and  by  the  end 
of  the  day  the  French  had  had  to  retire  over  the  Aube,  and 
were  in  full  retreat  Northward  towards  Sezanne. 


i8i4]  1814  AND  THE  TREATY  OF  PARIS 


641 


The  reason  for  Schwarzenberg’s  concentration  is  to  be  found 
in  the  determination  of  the  Allies  to  put  an  end  to  the  struggle. 
Though  after  La  Rothiere  Napoleon  had  agreed  to  a  conference 
at  Chatillon,  his  object  had  not  been  to  conclude  peace  but 
to  separate  Austria  from  her  Allies — a  possibility  always  present 
to  his  mind.  He  played  the  game  of  procrastination  with  some 
temporary  success,  but  with  the  final  result  of  convincing  the 
Allies  that  his  overthrow  was  indispensable  if  peace  were  to  be 
secured.1  Alexander  was  now  keen  upon  his  deposition,  and 
the  Allies  were  in  accord  on  that  point,  if  there  seemed  little 
prospect  that,  when  they  had  got  rid  of  him,  they  would  be 
able  to  agree  as  to  his  successor.  The  Treaty  of  Chaumont, 
concluded  mainly  through  Castlereagh’s  influence  (March  1st), 
brought  them  a  stage  nearer  unity.  France  was  to  be  restored 
to  her  ancient  limits,  her  vassals  were  to  be  set  completely  free, 
and  Germany  was  to  be  reconstructed  as  a  Federal  Union. 

After  Napoleon’s  repulse  at  Arcis  sur  Aube  the  Allies  held  a 
council  of  war,  which  came,  not  without  misgivings,  to  the  all- 
important  decision  to  press  on  straight  to  Paris  and  so  force 
a  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter.  They  had  just  had  the 
good  fortune  to  intercept  a  despatch  from  Napoleon  to  Marie 
Louise  in  which  the  Emperor  announced  his  resolve  to  try  the 
effect  of  a  blow  at  the  communications  of  the  Allies,  a  desperate 
move  by  which  he  hoped  to  paralyse  the  advance  on  Paris 
which  he  found  himself  unable  to  stem  ;  he  still  hoped  to  cajole 
or  intimidate  Austria  into  deserting  the  Coalition,  and  the 
move  would  also  allow  him  to  gather  reinforcements  from  the 
fortresses  of  the  Eastern  frontier.  Accordingly  he  moved  from 
Sezanne  on  Vitry  and  St.  Dizier,  defeated  a  Russian  corps  at 
the  latter  place  on  the  28th,  and  then  learnt  that  the  main  army 
of  the  Allies,  instead  of  being,  as  he  hoped,  in  full  retreat  for  the 
Rhine,  was  moving  on  Paris.  He  hastened  Westward,  but  it  was 
already  too  late;  he  had  only  reached  Fontainebleau  when  the 
news  came  that  Paris  was  already  in  the  hands  of  the  Allies. 

The  idea  of  disregarding  communications  and  pushing  on  to 
Paris  originated  with  the  Russian  Toll.  Alexander  took  it  up 

1  M.  Fournier  (Der  Congress  von  Chatillon  :  die  Politik  im  Kriege  von  1814)  shows 
that  it  was  the  capture  by  the  Allies  of  the  letter  to  Caulaincourt,  written  by  Napoleon 
on  March  19th,  which  finally  persuaded  Francis  11  that  Napoleon  was  playing  fast  and 
loose  with  him,  and  could  not  be  trusted  to  abide  by  any  concessions  which  might  be 
extorted  from  him.  Thus  Napoleon’s  efforts  to  work  on  Austria’s  jealousy  of  Russia 
and  Prussia,  which  had  at  one  time  seemed  to  be  bearing  fruit,  came  to  nothing. 

41 


642  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1814 


at  once  with  great  warmth,  and  Schwarzenberg  and  Frederick 
William  acquiescing,  the  Army  of  Bohemia  had  started  for  Paris 
as  Napoleon  moved  East  (March  20th).  The  Army  of  Silesia 
had  resumed  its  march  on  the  18th,  pushing  the  corps  of 
Marmont  and  Mortier  back  before  it.  These  detachments  had 
fallen  back  to  Vertus  when  Napoleon  summoned  them  Eastward 
to  join  him.  In  obeying  his  orders  they  met  the  Army  of 
Bohemia  at  La  Fere  Champenoise  (March  25th),  were  beaten 
and  driven  in  on  Paris.  By  the  29th  the  Army  of  Bohemia, 
which  had  moved  by  Melun  and  Corbeil,  was  at  Charenton, 
Bliicher  had  come  up  by  Meaux  to  St.  Denis.  On  March  30th 
there  was  sharp  fighting  outside  Paris.  Only  at  a  heavy  cost 
did  the  Allies  wrest  Montmartre,  Montreuil  and  Vincennes  from 
Marmont’s  corps ;  but  the  positions  were  gained,  and  Paris, 
exposed  without  appeal  to  a  bombardment,  could  only  avert 
that  disaster  by  opening  its  gates.  March  31st  saw  the  Allies 
enter  Paris  in  triumph,  and  even  Napoleon  had  to  confess  him¬ 
self  beaten,  for  his  army  would  not  follow  him  to  a  campaign 
behind  the  Loire.  On  April  6th  he  agreed  to  abdicate,  and  on 
the  nth  a  provisional  treaty  was  signed  between  him  and  the 
Allies.  Napoleon  renounced  the  throne  of  France  and  retired 
to  Elba,  and  with  the  conclusion  of  the  definite  Treaty  of  Paris 
(May  30th),  by  which  France  was  left  with  the  frontier  she  had 
possessed  in  1792,  his  overthrow  seemed  accomplished  ;  and  the 
problem  before  Europe,  and  especially  before  Germany,  was  no 
longer  to  destroy  the  structure  he  had  reared,  but  to  rebuild 
something  stable  out  of  its  ruins. 

The  Treaty  of  Paris  was  a  sad  disappointment  to  those  who 
had  hoped  to  have  their  revenge  upon  France  for  the  injuries 
inflicted  upon  Germany  under  Napoleon’s  auspices.  The  Allies 
by  adopting  the  principle  that  Napoleon  alone  was  responsible 
and  that  France  must  not  be  punished,  had  refused  to  satisfy 
those — and  there  were  many  of  them  in  Germany — who  had 
desired  an  eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,  who  clamoured 
for  a  war  indemnity,  territorial  cessions,  safeguards  against  future 
aggression.  Had  the  leaders  of  the  great  popular  movement  in 
Germany  had  their  way,  had  the  views  expressed  by  Arndt 
been  shared  by  those  in  authority,  France  would  not  have  got 
off  lightly.  But  in  the  conclusion  of  the  Treaty  of  Paris  the 
preponderating  influence  was  that  of  the  Czar :  it  was  he 
rather  than  Frederick  William  or  Francis  11  who  had  the  last 


1 8 1 4]  1814  AND  THE  TREATY  OF  PARIS 


643 


word,  and  his  zeal  for  the  emancipation  of  Germany  was  already 
dying  down  and  being  replaced  by  a  generous  wish  to  spare  the 
defeated  French.  Stein  was  losing  his  influence  over  him,  and 
Talleyrand,  adroitly  utilising  the  Czar’s  weakness  for  a  principle, 
had  enlisted  him  on  behalf  of  the  Legitimism  in  which  the 
astute  Frenchman  had  divined  the  best  defence  that  France 
could  oppose  to  those  who  wished  to  despoil  her.  The  Allies, 
while  professing  to  restore  the  state  of  things  which  had  existed 
before  the  Revolution,  could  hardly  deprive  France  of  Alsace 
and  Lorraine.  England  was  not  less  warm  in  supporting  the 
Legitimist  principle,  and  Castlereagh  defended  the  restoration 
to  France  of  most  of  her  colonies  as  being  likely  to  incline  her 
to  peace  by  giving  her  no  cause  for  dissatisfaction.  Austria, 
despite  Metternich’s  quarrel  with  the  Czar  over  the  violation  of 
Swiss  neutrality,  was  not  disposed  to  press  France  hard.  She 
wanted  to  avoid  change  as  much  as  possible,  to  limit  the  area 
affected  by  the  inevitable  but  distasteful  reconstruction,  and  she 
had  no  reason  to  fear  a  restoration  of  the  Bourbon  monarchy  to 
the  full  extent  of  its  old  dominions.  There  remained  only 
Prussia;  but  neither  Frederick  William  nor  Hardenberg  had 
fully  identified  themselves  with  the  aspirations  of  the  national 
party  in  Germany,  nor  were  they  likely  to  oppose  the  unanimous 
voice  of  their  allies.  German  nationalism  might  desire  that 
not  only  the  annexations  which  Napoleon  had  made  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Rhine  should  be  taken  from  France,  but  that  the 
opportunity  should  be  taken  to  recover  the  provinces  lost  to 
Louis  XV  and  Louis  XIV ;  but  the  Irridentist  spirit  found 
opponents  rather  than  champions  in  the  men  who  would  speak 
for  Germany  at  the  coming  congress.  Dynastic  not  national 
considerations  were  to  regulate  the  settlement.  The  thorny 
problem  of  building  up  a  really  united  Germany  was  avoided 
by  statesmen  who  saw  that  the  autocracy  of  the  Princes,  their 
masters,  was  absolutely  incompatible  with  union  on  nationalist 
and  popular  lines.  It  would  be  impossible  to  adopt  the  principle 
of  nationalism  and  at  the  same  time  to  stifle  the  dreaded  voices 
of  Liberalism  and  democracy. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 


THE  CONGRESS  OF  VIENNA 


VEN  before  the  meeting  of  Congress  which  was  to  recast 


1  v  the  political  map  of  Europe,  enough  had  happened  to 
make  it  abundantly  clear  that  the  reconstruction  would  be  the 
work  of  the  princes,  not  of  the  peoples,  and  that  the  main 
object  of  the  negotiations  would  be  to  confine  the  necessary 
changes  within  the  narrowest  possible  limits.  Thus  the  projects 
for  the  reconstruction  of  Germany,  with  which  every  publicist 
was  busy  from  Cologne  to  Konigsberg  and  from  Munich  to 
Hamburg,  hardly  received  even  a  nominal  consideration  from 
Metternich  and  his  fellows.  Stein  alone  among  the  pleni¬ 
potentiaries  present  at  Vienna  was  in  sympathy  with  the 
aspirations  of  the  nationalist  party  in  Germany;  and  Stein 
was  present,  not  as  the  representative  of  any  German  state, 
but  among  the  Russian  deputation  ;  and  even  in  that  capacity 
he  was  far  less  influential  than  he  had  been  twelve  months 
earlier,  when  he  had  enjoyed  a  greater  share  of  the  Czar’s 
confidence. 

But  not  even  Stein  himself  seems  to  have  contemplated 
anything  like  the  German  Empire  of  the  present  day ;  he  had 
no  idea  of  excluding  Austria  from  Germany,  but  apparently 
wished  to  see  a  federation  under  the  leadership  of  Austria,  in 
which  Prussia  and  Austria  were  to  co-operate  on  terms  of 
practical  equality.  Now  as  always,  he  was  the  bitter  opponent 
of  the  middle-sized  states,  in  which  he  saw  the  main  obstacles 
to  the  unification  of  Germany.  The  Bavaria  or  the  Baden  of 
1814  could  make  out  a  far  better  case  for  its  independent 
sovereignty  than  had  been  possible  to  the  Bavaria  or  Baden 
of  1794.  To  obtain  some  degree  of  unification  and  of  subjection 
of  the  middle  states  to  the  central  organisation,  Stein  at  one 
time  proposed  the  resuscitation  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire. 
This  was  only  what  had  been  proposed  by  the  Treaty  of  Kalisch 
when  Prussia  and  Russia  had  announced  their  intention  of 


THE  CONGRESS  OF  VIENNA 


645 


1814] 

“  re-establishing  the  venerable  Empire  ”  to  afford  “  effective 
protection  and  defence”  to  the  people  of  Germany.  But  since 
March  1813  things  had  changed.  The  popular  movement  to 
which  the  sovereigns  had  then  appealed  was  now  the  force  they 
were  endeavouring  to  curb  and  control,  and  the  Kalisch  appeal, 
which  had  contemplated  a  reconstruction  effected  by  the  joint 
action  of  princes  and  peoples,  had  become  one  of  the  things 
best  forgotten.  But  the  idea  of  a  revived  Empire  was  by  no 
means  without  support:  in  advocating  it  Stein  did  but  agree 
with  one  of  the  many  projects  which  were  being  put  forward  in 
unofficial  circles.  This  was  the  scheme  of  the  Professor  of  Civil 
Law  in  the  University  of  Halle,  Christian  Daniel  Voss.  He 
declared  that  legally  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  still  existed,  since 
it  had  never  been  dissolved ;  but  he  differed  greatly  from  Stein 
in  going  on  to  propose  that,  in  order  to  maintain  a  due  equality 
between  Austria  and  Prussia,  the  head  of  the  House  of  Nassau 
should  be  chosen  Emperor  with  Frankfort  as  his  capital.  But 
this  proposal,  like  that  which  would  have  given  Bavaria  the 
headship  of  the  revived  Empire,  and  another  which  would  have 
made  the  Imperial  dignity  rotate  between  half  a  dozen  of  the 
leading  Houses,  was  altogether  out  of  the  range  of  practical 
politics,  and  Austria’s  absolute  refusal  to  have  the  Empire 
restored,  except  on  terms  which  none  of  the  other  Powers  would 
ever  have  contemplated,  proved  decisive.  It  was  hardly  wonder¬ 
ful  that  Austria  should  have  taken  this  line.  The  nominal 
headship  over  states  which  did  all  they  could  to  make  that  head¬ 
ship  still  less  effective,  which  took  every  chance  of  hampering  and 
obstructing  the  authority  of  the  head,  had  no  attractions  for  the 
Hapsburgs.  It  would  be  not  unfair  to  say  of  Metternich  what 
has  been  said  with  far  less  truth  of  Joseph  II,  that  he  neglected 
the  German  for  the  dynastic  interests  of  the  Hapsburgs.  He  saw 
a  chance  of  establishing  Austrian  supremacy  over  Italy,  and  to 
secure  that  he  made  no  attempt  to  recover  the  ground  Austria 
had  lost  in  Germany.  Thus  although  Austria’s  intervention 
may  be  said  to  have  decided  against  Napoleon  the  struggle  for 
the  liberation  of  Germany,  Austria  made  no  attempt  to  profit 
by  it  to  reassert  her  claims  or  strengthen  her  influence  over  Ger¬ 
many.  Stadion  and  the  Archdukes  Charles  and  John  might  have 
managed  to  identify  Austria  with  the  national  revolt  against  PYench 
domination,  but  unfortunately  for  Austria  it  was  by  the  spiritual 
heir  of  Thugut  that  her  policy  was  guided  at  the  critical  moment. 


646  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1814 


Thus  though  unofficial  writers  like  Griiner  of  Coburg  might 
point  out  that  what  Germany  needed  was  the  “  union  of  its  forces 
to  preserve  freedom  and  independence,  homogeneity  of  ad¬ 
ministration  through  the  subjection  of  individual  states  to  a 
common  system  of  law,”  the  realisation  of  this  desired  unity  was 
bound  to  be  prevented  by  the  fact  that  a  centralised  organisa¬ 
tion,  if  it  were  to  be  effective,  must  involve  the  partial  suppres¬ 
sion  of  the  internal  independence  which  the  middle-sized  states 
had  secured  under  Napoleon’s  rule.  The  Princes  would  not 
surrender  sovereign  rights  on  which  they  set  as  much  store  as 
they  did  on  that  of  making  treaties  with  other  Powers,  still  less 
would  they  agree  to  submit  their  domestic  affairs  to  the  super¬ 
vision  of  the  officials  of  the  Confederacy,  and  yet  unless  some 
means  were  provided  by  which  the  Confederacy  could  secure  the 
due  performance  of  their  duties  by  its  members,  its  existence 
would  soon  be  as  much  of  a  fiction  as  that  of  the  Empire 
had  ever  been. 

But  the  constitutional  reconstruction  of  Germany  was  not 
the  only  task  which  awaited  the  Congress  when  it  assembled  at 
Vienna  on  October  1st,  1814.  An  even  harder  task  was  that  of 
territorial  redistribution.  Differences  of  opinion  over  the  con¬ 
stitution  had  the  effect  of  making  it  more  negative,  since  the  less 
definite  the  constitution  the  less  acute  the  differences :  hence 
they  were  somewhat  of  the  nature  of  an  academic  discussion, 
and  not  likely  to  lead  to  a  serious  conflict.  Quarrels  over  the 
constitution  could  always  be  averted  by  adopting  a  solution  so 
indefinite  as  to  really  amount  to  the  shelving  of  the  disputed 
point ;  quarrels  over  territory  were  far  more  important :  there 
was  something  tangible  at  stake,  and  but  for  the  return  of 
Napoleon  from  Elba  it  is  possible  that  the  map  of  Europe  would 
not  have  been  settled  without  an  actual  collision  between  the 
former  allies. 

The  plenipotentiaries  assembled  at  Vienna  had  not  an 
absolutely  free  hand.  Their  deliberations  were  bound  to  take 
account  of  the  arrangements  already  made  by  the  four  Treaties 
of  Kalisch,  Toplitz,  Chaumont  and  Paris,  which  have  been  well 
described  as  “  the  preamble  to  the  Congress  of  Vienna.”  1  These 
had  removed  from  the  path  two  of  the  old  obstacles  on  which 
European  coalitions  had  come  to  grief.  At  Toplitz,  Prussia  had 
renounced  all  claims  on  Hanover,  the  stone  on  which  the  Third 

1  Rose,  p.  325. 


THE  CONGRESS  OF  VIENNA 


647 


1814] 

Coalition  had  stumbled,  while  a  corollary  of  the  same  agreement, 
the  Treaty  of  Ried,  had  seen  Austria  renounce  her  more  ex¬ 
tensive  designs  on  Bavaria  in  the  hope  of  compensation  in  Italy, 
though  she  recovered  Tyrol,  Salzburg  and  the  other  acquisi¬ 
tions  which  Bavaria  had  made  from  her  by  Napoleon’s  aid. 
Two  very  important  questions  remained:  the  fate  of  Poland 
and — closely  connected  with  the  Polish  question — the  treatment 
of  Saxony.  There  was  no  idea  of  undoing  the  work  of  secularisa¬ 
tion  effected  in  1803  and  the  subsequent  “  mediatisation  ”  which 
had  between  them  reduced  the  “  sovereign  ”  states  of  Germany 
from  the  300  of  1786  to  the  39  of  1815  ;  but  even  so  in  the  three 
states  more  particularly  identified  with  Napoleon  which  had 
shared  his  overthrow,  Westphalia  and  the  Grand  Duchies  of 
Berg  and  Frankfort,  and  in  the  recovered  districts  West  of  the 
Rhine,  there  was  ample  store  of  plunder  out  of  which  every 
German  dynasty  hoped  to  make  acquisitions  to  be  veiled  under 
the  blessed  name  of  “  compensation.” 

But  these  four  treaties  had  settled  certain  other  things  which 
marked  out  the  lines  along  which  the  discussions  were  to  run. 
At  Kalisch,  Prussia  had  been  promised  an  Eastern  frontier  con¬ 
necting  Silesia  with  West  Prussia,  and  compensation  in  Northern 
and  Western  Germany  for  her  surrender  of  the  rest  of  her  Polish 
possessions  to  Russia.  At  Toplitz  the  German  Princes  between 
the  Elbe  and  the  Rhine  had  been  promised  “  full  and  uncon¬ 
ditional  independence.”  At  Chaumont  a  federal  alliance  had 
been  selected  as  the  most  satisfactory  form  for  the  reconstituted 
Germany.  Finally,  by  the  Treaty  of  Paris,  Italy  was  to  be 
divided  between  Austria  and  the  various  Houses  which  Napoleon 
had  dispossessed,  the  House  of  Orange  was  to  receive  an  acces¬ 
sion  of  territory,  and  the  ex-departments  of  Mont  Tonnerre, 
Sarre,  Rhin  et  Moselle  and  Roer  were  to  be  divided  between 
Prussia  and  the  minor  states  of  Germany. 

October  1st  found  the  plenipotentiaries  assembled  at  the 
Austrian  capital,  but  it  was  decided  to  postpone  the  opening  of 
the  actual  negotiations  for  a  month  to  allow  the  preparation  of 
agenda.  All  the  principal  statesmen  of  Europe  were  present. 
Austria  had  as  her  principal  representative  Metternich,  whose 
voice  carried  as  much  if  not  more  weight  in  the  deliberations  than 
that  of  any  other  negotiator,  and  whose  position  was  appropri¬ 
ately  recognised  by  his  election  as  President  of  the  Congress  ; 
he  was  assisted  by  the  able  and  energetic  von  Wessemberg- 


643  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1814 


Amfingen,  and  by  von  Gentz  who  acted  as  Secretary  to  the 
Congress.  From  England  came  Lords  Cathcart  and  Castlereagh,1 
with  Count  Miinster  as  the  envoy  of  Hanover.  France  sent 
Talleyrand,  who  was  to  display  his  diplomatic  prowess  to  the 
greatest  advantage.  Prussia  entrusted  her  interests  to  Harden- 
berg  and  von  Humboldt.  Most  of  the  minor  sovereigns  of 
Germany  were  present  in  person,  and  all  were  represented,  even 
down  to  the  various  “  benches  ”  of  Counts  suppressed  at  the  time 
of  the  great  mediatisation.  Russia  characteristically  sent  two 
foreigners,  the  German  Stein  and  the  Italian  Capo  d’Istria, 
among  the  colleagues  of  her  Foreign  Minister,  Nesselrode,  while 
the  Czar  was  also  present.  It  was  generally  felt  that  Alexanders 
share  in  the  Congress  would  be  no  small  one ;  but  those  who 
feared  or  distrusted  Russia  might  take  comfort  in  the  evident 
signs  of  antagonism  between  him  and  Metternich.  This  opposi¬ 
tion,  partly  personal,  accentuated  by  the  action  of  Austria  in 
1814  and  over  the  violation  of  Swiss  neutrality,  had  had  its 
origin  in  Metternich’s  successful  opposition  to  the  Czar’s  wish  to 
assume  the  command  of  the  Allied  forces  in  1813.  The  Polish 
question,  if  no  other,  seemed  bound  to  provoke  a  conflict  between 
them. 

The  question  of  German  reconstruction,  the  least  contentious 
of  the  problems  before  the  Congress,  but  still  bound  to  be  a 
lengthy  affair,  had  begun  to  be  discussed  by  a  committee  a 
fortnight  before  the  Congress  opened.2  Stein  and  Hardenberg 
had  come  forward  with  a  project,  based  on  the  Treaty  of 
Chaumont,  for  the  management  of  German  affairs  by  a  Directory 
composed  of  Austria,  Bavaria,  Hanover  and  Prussia.  This  was 
to  include  commercial  union,  with  no  internal  tariffs  against 
other  German  states,  an  Assembly  which  should  include 
representatives  of  local  Estates,  and  a  federal  revenue  to  be 
derived  from  Customs  and  from  an  octroi  on  the  Rhine.  An 
alternative  suggestion  of  Hardenberg’s  was  that  the  new  federa¬ 
tion  should  exclude  all  Prussian  territory  East  of  the  Elbe,  and 

1  In  January  the  latter  had  to  return  home  for  the  opening  of  Parliament,  and  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  took  his  place. 

2  The  work  of  the  Congress  was  mainly  conducted  by  separate  committees 
appointed  to  consider  each  individual  question  (e. g.  the  reorganisation  of  the  Swiss 
Confederation),  while  the  envoys  of  the  Powers  which  had  assisted  to  conclude  the 
Peace  of  Paris,  Austria,  France,  Great  Britain,  Portugal,  Prussia,  Russia,  Spain  and 
Sweden,  formed  a  “Committee  of  Eight,”  which  for  all  practical  purposes  was  the 
effective  part  of  the  Congress. 


THE  CONGRESS  OF  VIENNA 


649 


1814] 

all  that  of  Austria  save  Berchtesgaden,  Salzburg,  Tyrol  and 
the  Vorarlberg.  For  the  rest  of  their  territory,  Austria  and 
Prussia  would  stand  outside  the  federation,  merely  concluding 
close  alliances  with  it  and  guaranteeing  its  integrity  and 
independence. 

But  neither  of  these  schemes  found  much  favour  with  the 
Congress,  and  in  the  end  Hardenberg  acquiesced  in  the  Twelve 
Articles  which  Metternich  put  forward,1  and  which  were 
submitted  to  the  consideration  of  a  special  committee  (Oct. 
1 6th).  On  this  committee  Austria,  Bavaria,  Hanover,  Prussia 
and  Wurtemberg  were  represented,  but  it  soon  became  evident 
that  its  deliberations  were  not  likely  to  produce  any  satisfactory 
result.  The  scheme  drawn  up  under  Metternich’s  direction 
would  have  divided  Germany  into  Circles,  two  to  be  directed  by 
Austria,  two  by  Prussia  and  one  each  by  Bavaria,  Hanover  and 
Wurtemberg;  it  would  also  have  established  two  Councils,  one 
composed  of  the  Heads  of  the  Circles,  and  another  of  the  other 
members.  The  Council  of  Heads  was  to  represent  Germany  in 
foreign  affairs,  decide  on  peace  and  war,  and  to  act  as  a  legisla¬ 
tive  chamber  in  conjunction  with  the  Council  of  Members.  The 
Heads  were  also  to  be  charged  with  the  execution  of  the 
decisions  of  the  Confederation  and  with  the  conduct  of  military 
affairs.  The  right  of  secession  was  secured  to  the  individual 
states,  and  they  were  to  enjoy  full  sovereignty  except  where 
expressly  limited.  There  was  to  be  no  formal  head  of  the 
Confederation,  but  Austria  was  to  preside  in  both  Chambers.2 

But  this  scheme  did  not  commend  itself  to  Bavaria  and 
Wurtemberg.  They  protested  vigorously  against  the  loss  of  the 
right  to  conclude  alliances  and  to  make  war  on  their  own 
account.  Moreover,  a  clause  which  pledged  the  individual  states 
to  govern  constitutionally  and  to  give  constitutional  rights  to 
their  subjects,  excited  their  most  strenuous  opposition.  They 
argued  with  no  small  force  that  to  apply  to  the  minor  states  of 
Germany  institutions  which  larger  states  had  gained  as  the 
result  of  long  struggles,  would  be  altogether  premature  and  out 
of  keeping  with  the  state  of  political  development  at  which 
Germany  had  arrived. 

The  clause  was  certainly  one  which  it  is  surprising  to  find  in 
any  scheme  drawn  up  under  the  auspices  of  Metternich.  It  was 
not  exactly  in  accord  with  his  professions  or  his  practice,  and 

1  Cf.  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1806-187 /,  i.  527  ft'.  2  Ibid.  i.  527~529« 


650  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1814 


might  be  thought  to  have  been  inserted  to  produce  dissension. 
Anyhow,  the  committee’s  labours  proved  fruitless :  Wiirtemberg 
declared  (Nov.  16th)  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  arrange  the 
affairs  of  the  Confederation  until  the  boundaries  had  been  settled, 
and  therefore  withdrew  from  the  committee,  which  in  consequence 
suspended  its  sittings,  although  Metternich,  Hardenberg  and 
some  of  the  other  plenipotentiaries  continued,  more  or  less 
informally,  to  draft  and  discuss  schemes  of  reorganisation. 
Meanwhile  the  representatives  of  the  minor  states  had  been 
meeting  and  discussing  the  situation.  They  talked  vaguely  of 
reviving  the  Empire,  but  showed  no  inclination  to  do  anything 
to  make  a  revived  Empire  an  effective  institution,  or  to  give  the 
Emperor  the  powers  without  which  his  position  could  be  nothing 
but  a  farce.  Stein,  who  had  not  yet  abandoned  all  hope  of 
seeing  a  constitution  adopted  which  would  permit  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  that  national  feeling  on  which  almost  every  other 
German  statesmen  looked  with  so  much  distrust,  did  what  he 
could  to  encourage  the  idea,  but  it  was  out  of  the  question.  A 
Brunswick  Privy  Councillor,  von  Schmidt,  went  so  far  as  to 
submit  to  Count  Munster,  the  chief  Hanoverian  representative, 
a  memorandum  which  laid  down  four  functions  as  the  proper 
sphere  for  the  Emperor’s  authority  ;  but  these  involved  conces¬ 
sions  Austria  could  never  have  obtained  from  the  Princes,  and 
without  the  power  to  superintend  the  execution  of  the  decisions 
of  the  Confederation,  without  the  control  of  the  administration 
of  justice  and  of  the  defensive  system  of  the  Empire,  the  right 
of  presiding  over  the  meeting  of  the  Confederation  would  have 
been  worthless.  Munster,  indeed,  could  only  reply  to  von 
Schmidt  that  he  had  himself  urged  Austria  to  revive  the 
Empire,  but  that  he  found  her  determined  to  stand  by  the 
clause  in  the  Treaty  of  Chaumont,  which  prescribed  a  federative 
alliance  as  the  new  constitution  for  Germany.  Thus  it  was  in 
the  end  as  a  federative  alliance,  not  as  a  united  nation,  that 
Germany  emerged  from  the  Congress,  when  in  March  the 
sudden  escape  of  Napoleon  from  Elba  and  his  return  to  France 
precipitated  a  settlement.  This  took  the  shape  suggested  by 
Metternich,  who  resolutely  refused  any  revival  of  the  old  Empire. 
He  saw  that  Austria’s  own  dominions  were  enough  in  themselves 
to  form  an  Empire,  and  that  the  loose  and  indefinite  relations 
which  would  prevail  under  a  Confederation  would  be  better 
adapted  for  maintaining  Austrian  influence  over  the  South 


THE  CONGRESS  OF  VIENNA 


651 


1815] 

German  states  than  any  accurately  defined  constitution.  Nor 
was  there  any  Power  in  Germany  which  felt  disposed  to 
champion  the  cause  of  that  national  sentiment  which  the 
struggle  of  1813  had  aroused,  but  which,  now  that  it  had  served 
its  purpose,  was  muzzled  and  impotent.  Nothing  could  have 
been  further  from  the  minds  of  Prussia’s  representatives  in  1814 
than  the  idea  of  trying  to  oust  Austria  from  Germany  in  order 
to  identify  Prussia  with  this  national  sentiment  of  which  fifty- 
six  years  later  the  Hohenzollern  were  to  make  such  excellent 
use. 

Thus  the  Germanic  Confederation,  to  the  formation  of  which 
the  representatives  of  the  states  of  Germany  formally  agreed  on 
June  15th,  1815,  was  little  more  than  the  Confederation  of  the 
Rhine,  with  the  addition  of  Austria  and  Prussia,  and  without 
Napoleon  as  “Protector.”  Five  Kingdoms,  Bavaria,  Hanover, 
Prussia,  Saxony  and  Wtirtemberg;  eight  Grand  Duchies,  Baden, 
Hesse-Cassel,  Hesse-Darmstadt,  Luxemburg  (which  belonged 
to  the  King  of  the  Netherlands),  Oldenburg,  Mecklenburg- 
Schwerin,  Mecklenburg  -  Strelitz  and  Saxe -Weimar;  eight 
Duchies,  Anhalt  -  Bernburg,  Anhalt  -  Dessau,  Anhalt  -  Kothen, 
Brunswick,  Holstein  and  Lauenburg  (which  belonged  to  the  King 
of  Denmark),  Nassau,  Saxe-Gotha  and  Saxe-Hildburghausen  ; 
twelve  Principalities,  Hesse- PI om burg,  Hohenzollern-Hechingen, 
Plohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Liechtenstein, Lippe-Detmold,  Saxe- 
Coburg,  Saxe-Meiningen,  Schaumburg-Lippe,  Schwarzburg- 
Rudolstadt,  Schwarzburg-Sondershausen,  Reuss  and  Waldeck  ; 
and  four  PYee  Cities,  Bremen,  Frankfort,  Hamburg  and  Lubeck, 
were  included  in  the  Confederation,  whose  affairs  were  entrusted 
to  the  control  of  a  Diet  under  the  presidency  of  Austria.  To  this 
body  were  delegated  the  tasks  of  providing  the  Confederation 
with  the  fundamental  laws  the  Congress  had  not  the  time  to  lay 
down,  and  also  that  of  arranging  the  details  of  the  military  and 
other  organisations  which  had  to  be  erected.  It  was  to  have 
two  Chambers,  an  ordinary  Assembly  sitting  permanently  at 
Frankfort  and  consisting  of  17  members,  and  a  General 
Assembly  of  69  members,  summoned  intermittently  when  more 
important  matters  called  for  discussion.  But  the  control  of  the 
Diet  over  the  members  of  the  Confederation  was  neither  very 
complete  nor  very  effective ;  private  war  between  members  was 
forbidden,  but  in  domestic  affairs  each  might  go  his  own  way. 
One  of  the  clauses  of  the  Act  of  Federation  did  indeed  declare 


652  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


that  a  constitution  should  be  established  in  each  state,  but 
nothing  was  done  to  enforce  this  provision,  and  in  the  absence  of 
a  “  sanction  ”  it  was  in  most  cases  a  dead  letter  from  the  very  first. 
This  was  in  no  small  measure  due  to  Metternich :  he  desired  to 
allow  the  minor  states  to  enjoy  the  utmost  possible  independence, 
and  therefore  made  Austria  the  champion  of  localism.  Prussia 
had  shown  herself  less  unfavourable  to  the  proposals  for  the 
unification  of  Germany,  and  Bavarian  and  Saxon  particularists 
were  beginning  to  look  on  her  as  the  chief  danger  to  their 
independence.  Hence  Austria’s  role  was  now  to  be  that  of  the 
guarantor  of  the  rights  of  the  minor  states  ;  Metternich  was  to 
make  her  the  supporter  of  the  very  principles  which  had  brought 
about  the  failure  of  her  efforts  to  unite  Germany.  It  was  a 
strange  inversion  of  parts,  but  the  work  of  disintegration  had 
been  completely  done,  too  thoroughly  to  allow  any  prospect  that 
it  could  be  undone,  and  Metternich  thought  that  more  might  be 
gained  by  keeping  on  good  terms  with  the  South  German  states 
and  devoting  the  efforts  of  Austria  to  securing  control  over 
Italy.  Thus  it  was  Metternich  who  succeeded  in  so  amending 
Humboldt’s  “  Fourteen  Articles  ”  that  the  Council  of  the  Con¬ 
federation,  instead  of  being  an  efficient  and  vigorous  executive, 
found  its  sphere  of  activity  so  much  curtailed  and  its  initiative 
so  much  cramped  that  it  was  all  but  powerless. 

Lengthy  as  the  negotiations  over  the  constitution  had  been, 
those  over  the  territorial  redistribution  excited  far  more  interest 
and  feeling.  Of  all  the  members  of  the  Confederation  of  the 
Rhine  the  King  of  Saxony  had  adhered  with  most  fidelity  to 
Napoleon  in  1813.  Taken  prisoner  after  Leipzig,  he  had  not  been 
able  to  secure  himself  or  his  dominions  by  such  a  compact  as 
those  made  by  Wurtemberg  at  Fulda  and  by  Hesse-Darmstadt, 
so  Prussia  proceeded  to  claim  the  kingdom  as  hers  by  right  of 
conquest  and  in  compensation  for  the  losses  she  was  prepared  to 
suffer  farther  East.  Alexander  for  his  part  was  firmly  resolved 
to  have  Poland,  not  merely  the  Russian  shares  of  the  three  parti¬ 
tions,  but  if  possible  the  whole  country.  He  desired  to  rebuild 
Poland  as  a  kingdom  to  be  united  to  Russia  by  a  personal  tie  such 
as  that  between  Great  Britain  and  Hanover.  Influenced  by  Czar- 
toriski,  he  hoped  to  rally  Polish  national  feeling  to  him  by  this 
means.  If  he  could  gain  this  end  he  was  prepared  to  see  Saxony 
pass  to  Prussia,  while  Austria  was  to  be  left  to  recoup  herself  as 
best  she  could  in  Italy.  This  would  have  involved  a  division  by 


THE  CONGRESS  OF  VIENNA 


653 


1815] 

no  means  acceptable  to  the  other  members  of  the  Congress,  and 
least  of  all  to  Castlereagh,  whose  policy,  following  in  the  lines  laid 
down  by  Pitt,  was  to  restore  as  far  as  possible  that  distribution 
of  territory  which  had  the  authority  of  tradition.  That  Russia’s 
efforts  in  the  cause  of  Europe  entitled  her  to  the  lion’s  share  of 
the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw  was  generally  admitted,  but  there 
was  not  the  same  disposition  to  include  as  a  corollary  Prussia’s 
preposterous  claim  to  the  whole  of  Saxony.  At  first,  however, 
England  contemplated  letting  Prussia  have  Saxony  :  not  free  from 
suspicions  of  Russia,  she  had  no  wish  to  see  her  unduly  strong, 
and  hoped  by  reconciling  Austria  and  Prussia  to  make  the 
Germanic  Confederation  a  powerful  factor  in  European  politics. 
Were  they  united  the  rest  of  Germany  must  follow  them,  and 
Russia  would  find  herself  balanced  by  her  neighbour  on  the  West. 
To  this  end  Castlereagh  would  have  reluctantly  sacrificed  Saxony  ; 
but  Metternich,  though  he  had  no  desire  to  press  Austria’s  claims 
on  Poland,  was  full  of  distrust  of  Alexander,  even  if  he  had  not 
been  bitterly  opposed  to  the  extension  of  Prussian  influence. 
However,  it  was  in  Talleyrand  that  Saxony  found  her  most  effec¬ 
tive  ally.  That  astute  diplomatist  had  no  intention  of  letting 
France  be  kept  out  of  her  share  in  the  councils  of  Europe:  he 
argued  that  it  was  Napoleon,  not  France,  that  had  been  the  uni¬ 
versal  enemy ;  it  was  therefore  unfair  to  punish  the  Bourbon  for 
the  wrong-doings  from  which  he  also  had  suffered;  France  ought 
not  to  be  treated  as  a  pariah,  but  as  a  friend.  The  claim  was  one 
the  Powers  could  not  but  admit.  At  the  same  time,  Talleyrand 
had  been  doing  all  he  could  to  establish  good  relations  between 
France  and  the  smaller  states.  A  better  opportunity  of  acting 
as  their  champion  than  that  afforded  by  the  case  of  Saxony  he 
could  not  have  desired.  The  project  was  exceedingly  unpopular 
in  Saxony,  where  no  element  of  the  population  was  prepared  to 
be  handed  over  from  its  old  rulers  to  the  detested  Hohenzollern, 
nor  was  it  much  better  liked  in  other  parts  of  Germany.  Bavaria 
and  the  other  Princes,  vigorously  supported  by  Talleyrand,  pro¬ 
tested  that  without  a  free  and  independent  Saxony  there  could  be 
no  stable  federal  Germany,  and  the  French  minister  had  little 
difficulty  in  persuading  England  and  Austria  to  adopt  this 
view. 

Alexander  and  Frederick  William  were  furious.  They  were 
in  military  possession  of  Saxony,  and  declared  that  they  would 
not  give  it  up.  For  a  time  it  seemed  as  if  it  might  come  to  a 


654  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


question  of  force,  and  Austria,  England  and  France  went  to  the 
length  of  concluding  a  defensive  alliance  (Jan.  3rd,  1815)  with  a 
view  to  this  possibility.  With  all  the  rest  of  Germany  on  its  side, 
for  outside  Prussia  public  opinion  as  expressed  by  the  journalists 
and  writers  was  strongly  in  favour  of  Saxony,  this  coalition  was 
a  strong  incentive  to  a  more  reasonable  attitude  on  the  part  of 
Russia  and  Prussia,  and  after  a  period  of  considerable  tension 
Metternich  managed  to  arrange  a  compromise  which  was  accepted. 
Saxony  escaped  wholesale  annexation  at  the  price  of  a  partition 
(Feb.  nth)  which  left  the  greater  part  of  the  country  to  its  King, 
and  handed  over  to  Prussia  Lower  Lusatia,  including  Cottbus, 
the  greater  part  of  Upper  Lusatia,  and  the  North-Western 
portion  of  the  Electorate,  including  Wittenberg,  Torgau  and 
Merseburg.  All  the  efforts  of  Hardenberg,  however,  failed  to 
obtain  for  Prussia  the  much-coveted  Leipzig,  and  the  portions 
which  the  House  of  Wettin  retained,  though  only  little  more  than 
half  the  area  of  the  kingdom  as  it  had  been  in  1812,  contained 
1,200,000  inhabitants  out  of  2,000,000  and  included  the  richer  as 
well  as  the  more  populous  districts.  At  this  heavy  price  Saxony 
was  saved.  A  reluctant  consent  was  extracted  from  Frederick 
Augustus  (April  6th),  on  which  the  Prussians  proceeded  to  evacu¬ 
ate  the  territory  they  had  hoped  to  make  their  own.  It  is,  how¬ 
ever,  open  to  question  whether  from  the  French  point  of  view  it 
might  not  in  the  long-run  have  been  better  to  let  Prussia  take 
Saxony  and  to  compensate  the  dispossessed  monarch  with  a  king¬ 
dom  on  the  Rhine  made  up  out  of  the  old  ecclesiastical  Elector¬ 
ates  with  Cleves-Jiilich  and  Zweibriicken.  The  majority  of  the 
subjects  of  such  a  kingdom  would  have  shared  their  ruler’s  religion, 
whereas  on  the  Elbe  the  Catholic  Wettins  ruled  a  Protestant  popu¬ 
lation.  There  would  also  have  been  no  slight  advantage  to  France 
in  keeping  Prussia  well  to  the  Eastward,  and  in  giving  her  Saxony 
with  its  traditional  connection  with  Poland,  thereby  making  it 
more  likely  that  she  would  be  brought  into  conflict  with  Russia 
than  with  France.  By  being  established  on  the  Rhine,  Prussia 
became  ultimately  identified  with  the  ideas  embodied  in  the 
popular  poem  Die  Wacht  am  Rhein :  should  a  new  Napoleon 
arise  in  France  it  would  be  Prussia  which  would  bar  his  path  into 
Germany.  Moreover,  the  elements  which  the  Rhenish  provinces 
brought  into  the  Prussian  polity  gave  her  more  in  common  with 
the  Catholics  of  the  South  than  she  had  hitherto  possessed,  and 
made  her  leadership  less  unpalatable  to  the  rest  of  Germany  than 


THE  CONGRESS  OF  VIENNA 


655 


1815] 

it  would  have  been  had  she  been  concentrated  to  the  Eastward, 
apart  from  and  outside  the  districts  in  which  the  ideas  of  the 
revolutionary  epoch  had  taken  root  and  on  which  the  Napoleonic 
administration  had  left  its  mark.  The  more  scattered  the  ter¬ 
ritories  of  Prussia,  the  more  diverse  the  racial  and  social  elements 
included  within  her  dominions,  the  easier  it  would  be  for  her  to 
identify  herself  with  Germany.  The  acquisition  of  the  Rhenish 
provinces  was  a  great  step  on  the  way  to  a  distant  but  wider  con¬ 
centration,  the  annexation  of  Saxony  would  have  given  an 
immediate  concentration  at  the  probable  sacrifice  of  the  future. 
In  the  hands  of  the  Hohenzollern  Cologne,  though  separated 
from  Berlin  by  a  wide  extent  of  non-Prussian  territory,  was  an 
outpost  which  when  the  time  should  come  would  serve  to  make 
easy  the  absorption  of  the  intervening  independent  states.  But 
in  1815  not  even  Talleyrand’s  astuteness  could  have  been  expected 
to  see  so  far  into  the  future. 

This  solution  of  the  question  of  Saxony  removed  the  principal 
difficulty  :  it  allowed  that  of  Poland  to  be  settled  also.  The  lion’s 
share,  37,000  square  miles,  with  2,500,000  people,  fell  to  Russia, 
Austria  contenting  herself  with  recovering  Galicia,1  and  letting 
Cracow  become  an  independent  Republic.  Prussia  kept  her  share 
of  the  original  partition,  West  Prussia,  Ermeland  and  the  Netze 
District,  and  also  Dantzic,  Thorn  and  Posen  out  of  the  territories 
she  had  annexed  in  1793,  but  she  gave  up  the  greater  part  of  that 
share  and  all  the  gains  of  1795.  It  was  therefore  out  of  the  king¬ 
dom  of  Westphalia  and  the  Rhenish  provinces  that  she  received 
the  bulk  of  her  “  compensation.”  Of  her  old  possessions  she 
relinquished  East  Friesland,  Goslar,  Lingen,  Osnabriick  and  part 
of  Munster  to  Hanover,  while  Anspach  and  Baireuth  remained  in 
Bavarian  hands ;  but  the  rest  of  her  lost  territories  were  restored 
to  her,  including  the  Altmark,  Cleves,  Halberstadt,  Guelders, 
Mark  and  Ravensberg,  Magdeburg,  Minden,  Paderborn  and  most 
of  Munster.  Not  less  important  were  the  new  acquisitions,  the 
greater  part  of  the  three  ecclesiastical  Electorates,  the  long- 
coveted  Berg  and  Jiilich,  to  which  the  Electors  of  Brandenburg 
had  first  laid  claim  more  than  two  hundred  years  earlier,  some  por¬ 
tions  of  Nassau,  Thuringia  and  Westphalia,  and,  last  but  not  least, 
Swedish  Pomerania,  with  Riigen  and  the  much-desired  Stralsund. 
These  acquisitions  enormously  improved  and  strengthened 

1  The  frontier  was  not  quite  identical  with  that  of  1 773»  but  what  she  now  held 
corresponded  approximately  to  her  share  of  the  First  Partition. 


656  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


Prussia’s  position.  In  actual  extent  she  covered  less  territory 
than  in  1806;  but  for  what  she  lost  in  the  way  of  Polish  wastes 
and  swamps  the  rich,  fertile  and  thickly -populated  Rhenish  and 
Westphalian  districts  were  a  more  than  ample  compensation. 
As  in  1806,  her  territories  were  scattered  and  disconnected, 
though  less  so  than  before,  and  the  dispersion  was  not  an  un¬ 
mixed  evil. 

Of  the  territory  remaining  disposable,  after  Hanover  had 
been  reinstated  in  its  old  possessions  with  some  additions,  the 
bulk  went  to  Bavaria  in  return  for  the  provinces  she  had  restored 
to  Austria.  Aschaffenburg  and  part  of  F ulda  from  the  suppressed 
Grand  Duchy  of  Frankfort,  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Wurzburg,  given 
up  by  Archduke  Ferdinand  who  returned  to  Tuscany,  together 
with  Anspach  and  Baireuth,  were  her  principal  acquisitions  East 
of  the  Rhine,  while  it  was  only  appropriate  that  a  considerable 
share  of  the  former  Rhenish  departments  should  go  to  the  head  of 
the  Wittelsbach  family  under  the  name  of  the  Bavarian  Palatinate. 
Hesse-Darmstadt  obtained  the  left  bank  lands  between  Bingen 
and  Worms  as  a  compensation  for  losses  in  Westphalia ;  Oldenburg 
received  Birkenfeld,  and  Saxe-Coburg  the  little  district  of  Lichten- 
berg ;  Mecklenburg-Strelitz,  which  had  some  claims  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Rhine,  was  brought  out  and  became  a  Grand  Duchy, 
as  did  Oldenburg,  Saxe-Weimar  and  Mecklenburg-Schwerin. 
William  IX  of  Hesse-Cassel  obtained  part  of  Fulda  and  the  now 
meaningless  title  of  “  Elector.”  Minor  rectifications  of  frontier 
were  too  numerous  to  merit  separate  mention.  Mayence  became 
a  Federal  fortress  with  a  mixed  garrison  of  Austrians  and 
Prussians,  while  some  of  the  territory  of  the  old  Electorate  went 
to  the  Duchy  of  Nassau,  at  this  time  held  jointly  by  Frederick 
Augustus  of  Nassau- Usingen  and  Frederick  William  of  Nassau- 
Weilburg.  This  Duchy  also  received  part 1  of  the  territories  of 
Orange-Nassau,  the  rest  of  which  2  went  to  Prussia  in  return  for 
some  portions  of  Guelders  which  were  incorporated  in  the  new 
kingdom  of  the  United  Netherlands.  This  new  state,  to  which 
geographical  unity  was  to  prove  unable  to  give  permanence  in 
face  of  racial,  political  and  religious  differences,  although  ruled 
over  by  a  German  prince,  and  composed  of  states  once  part  of 
the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  was  quite  unconnected  with  Germany 
except  through  Luxemburg,  which  at  the  same  time  sent 

1  Deutsche  Landes  und  Provinzial  Geschichte ,  p.  176. 

-  Siegen  and  the  district  on  the  right  bank  opposite  Bonn  and  Coblence. 


THE  CONGRESS  OF  VIENNA 


657 


1815] 

deputies  to  the  Estates  General  of  the  Netherlands  and  repre¬ 
sentatives  to  the  Diet,  since  it  formed  part  of  the  new  Germanic 
Confederation  by  whose  troops  its  fortresses  were  garrisoned. 
The  cession  of  Swedish  Pomerania  to  Prussia  in  return  for  a 
sum  of  2,000,000  dollars  severed  the  connection  between  one 
Scandinavian  kingdom  and  Germany,  a  connection  which  had 
brought  no  good  either  to  Sweden  or  to  Germany  since  the  fall 
of  Gustavus  at  Liitzen.  The  other  Scandinavian  kingdom,  how¬ 
ever,  did  remain  bound  to  Germany  by  its  complicated  relations 
with  Schleswig-Holstein,  to  which  was  now  added  the  little  Duchy 
of  Lauenburg.  Frederick  of  Denmark  had  hoped  for  better 
terms  when  he  consented  to  cede  Norway  to  Sweden ;  he  had 
expected  to  receive  Swedish  Pomerania,  but  he  had  to  pay  the 
penalty  for  his  loyalty  to  Napoleon. 

The  only  other  territorial  readjustments  which  deserve 
mention  were  the  acquisitions  in  Italy  with  which  Austria 
sought  to  recompense  herself  for  her  neglect  of  Germany.  Not 
only  did  she  recover  Istria  and  Dalmatia,1  for  which  geography 
provides  some  justification,  but  Venetia  and  the  Milanese,  in 
which  now  were  included  Napoleon’s  annexations  of  Bormio, 
Chiavenna  and  the  Valtelline,  were  formed  into  a  kingdom,  while 
Austrian  bayonets  were  the  true  foundation  of  the  power  of  the 
Hapsburg  or  kindred  dynasties  now  restored  in  Modena,  Tuscany 
and  Parma.2  Why  Austrian  rule  over  Italy,  accepted  placidly 
enough  in  the  iStli  Century,  should  have  been  so  unendur¬ 
able  to  the  19th  Century  Italians,  is  a  problem  which  belongs 
to  the  history  of  Italy  rather  than  to  that  of  Germany;  but 
that  Austria  should  have  sought  her  gains  here  rather  than 
lower  down  the  Danube  valley  does  not  give  Metternich  much 
claim  to  foresight  or  to  appreciation  of  the  situation  in  the 
Italian  peninsula  and  of  the  changes  which  twenty  years  of 
Napoleon’s  rule  had  wrought  in  the  sentiments  of  the  Italians. 

Throughout  these  arrangements  nothing  had  been  heard  of 
the  wishes  of  the  populations  thus  bandied  about  from  one 
dynasty  to  another.  Racial  divisions,  traditions,  sentiment,  even 
geographical  considerations,  had  to  give  way  to  the  selfishness  of 

1  She  also,  besides  recovering  from  Bavaria  Tyrol,  Salzburg,  Vorarlberg  and 
parts  of  Upper  Austria,  regained  possession  ot  Carinthia,  Carniola  and  the  other  dis¬ 
tricts  which  France  had  ruled  directly  under  the  name  of  the  Illyrian  Provinces,  in¬ 
cluding  the  territories  of  the  Republic  of  Ragusa.  This  gave  her  a  much  larger 
seaboard  than  she  had  hitherto  possessed. 

2  Given  to  Marie  Louise,  Napoleon’s  wife. 

42 


658  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


the  princes.  The  territorial  rearrangement  was  a  fitting  counter¬ 
part  to  the  constitutional  settlement.  Both  served  rather  to 
postpone  than  to  forward  the  realisation  of  that  German  unity 
of  which  so  much  had  been  heard  in  the  opening  months  of  1813. 
The  peoples  of  Germany  might  have  then  discovered  that  they 
were  one  and  the  same  nation,  poets  and  orators  might  have 
applauded  unity,  the  rulers  of  Germany  collected  at  Vienna  were 
determined  that  the  outcome  of  the  “War  of  Liberation  ”  should 
be  a  very  different  thing  from  that  which  the  popular  leaders 
had  sought.  Repression,  not  emancipation,  was  the  watchword 
of  the  governments  in  1 8 1 5  •  And  this  could  the  more  easily  be 
accomplished  since  the  nationalist  and  Liberal  forces,  practically 
without!  leaders  or  organisation,  were  powerless.  To  a  certain 
extent  they  had  wrought  their  own  undoing  by  reinforcing  the 
hands  of  their  rulers  in  the  struggle  against  Napoleon.  To 
throw  off  the  French  yoke  popular  enthusiasm  had  had  to  ally 
itself  with  the  governments.  Patriotic  fervour  had  played  no 
small  part  in  the  successes  of  1813,  but  it  had  been  compelled  to 
flow  along  the  official  channels.  By  submitting  to  military  dis¬ 
cipline  the  popular  movement  had  given  up  the  control  over 
itself  to  the  princes  and  their  ministers  and  generals.  It  was 
thus  powerless  to  defend  itself  against  the  measures  now  taken  to 
retain  it  under  control.  Its  ally  had  become  its  master.  At  the 
same  time  the  general  weariness  of  war  and  strife  made  people 
ready  to  acquiesce  in  the  decisions  of  the  Congress,  and  there 
was  no  small  truth  in  the  argument  of  the  Bavarian  delegates  1 
that  Germany  was  not  yet  qualified  to  receive  representative 
institutions  and  constitutional  government.  Before  unity  could 
be  achieved  there  was  much  still  to  be  done.  The  middle  states, 
Bavaria,  Wurtemberg,  Saxony  and  the  rest,  had  to  continue  by 
themselves  the  work  of  consolidation  begun  under  Napoleon’s 
influence.  Prussia  had  to  reorganise  the  provinces  she  had  re¬ 
covered  from  France  and  her  vassals,  and  to  assimilate  her  new 
acquisitions.  Above  all,  there  was  yet  another  round  to  be  fought 
out  in  the  great  struggle  between  Austria  and  Prussia.  Germany 
could  not  be  united  until  the  question  had  been  settled  under 
whose  hegemony  the  union  was  to  take  place.  While  that 
remained  undecided  no  rearrangement  of  Germany,  territorial  or 
constitutional,  could  be  other  than  temporary  and  a  makeshift. 
Indeed,  when  the  Act  of  Federation  was  signed  (June  18th),  it 

3  Cf.  p.  649. 


THE  SOUTH  WESTERN  STATES  IN  1815 


fl.VT«oansUr^O^W/«|-.  SCALE 


-J  ENGL. MILES 
60 


gffrtTS 


Kingdom  of  HANOVER  in  180!  showing  gains  ofl8Q3&!8l5 


CHAPTER  XXXV 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


APOLEON  may  have  been  quite  sincere  in  the  desire  for 


peace  with  the  rest  of  Europe  which  he  professed  on  his 


return  from  Elba,  but  it  was  hardly  to  be  expected  that  the 
Allies  would  take  him  at  his  word.  They  could  not  afford  to 
overlook  the  promises  he  had  made  and  broken  in  the  past,  they 
could  not  trust  him  even  if  he  were  speaking  the  truth,  for  cir¬ 


cumstances  he  could  not  control  must  have  driven  him  into  an 


attempt  to  retrieve  the  defeats  of  1813  and  1814.  His  Empire 
was  founded  on  victory  and  military  prestige,  and  the  reputation 
of  the  French  arms  required  that  Leipzig  and  Vittoria  should  be 
wiped  out ;  moreover,  once  his  expulsion  of  the  Bourbons  had 
challenged  the  settlement  of  1814,  it  was  inevitable  that,  sooner 
or  later,  he  would  have  to  tear  up  the  Treaty  of  Paris  and  seek 
to  recover  at  the  least  the  “  natural  boundaries  ”  of  France. 
Indeed,  the  Allies  had  no  alternative  but  to  take  up  their  arms 
again  and  endeavour  to  repeat  the  work  of  1814.  Less  than  a 
week  after  the  news  of  the  Emperor’s  escape  reached  Vienna 
(March  7th),  the  representatives  of  the  eight  Powers  which  had 
signed  the  Treaty  of  Paris  issued  a  declaration  that  Napoleon 
had  forfeited  all  rights  by  his  breach  of  the  arrangements  made 
with  him  and  was  consequently  delivered  over  to  public  justice 
(March  13th).  A  fortnight  later  (March  27th),  Austria,  England, 
Prussia  and  Russia  renewed  the  Treaty  of  Chaumont,  the  minor 
states  adhering  to  the  anti-Napoleonic  alliance,  though  without 
much  enthusiasm.  Even  Napoleon’s  faithful  partisan  Denmark 
did  not  stir  on  his  behalf ;  and  though  the  King  of  Saxony  pro¬ 
crastinated,  hoping  to  obtain  some  modification  of  the  harsh 
treatment  which  was  being  meted  out  to  his  kingdom,  in  the 
end  he,  too,  joined  the  Coalition  (May  27th).  Naples  was  the 
only  exception,  and  Murat  took  up  arms  not  so  much  with  the 
idea  of  assisting  his  old  master,  as  in  the  hope  of  rousing  a 
national  insurrection  in  Italy  against  Austria  and  Sardinia,  and 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


i8i5] 


66  i 


of  driving  those  Powers  out  of  the  peninsula  as  the  champion  of 
Italian  nationalism  and  unity.1 

The  attitude  of  Germany  towards  Napoleon  in  1815  was 
rather  different  from  what  it  had  been  two  years  earlier.  Then 
he  had  been  the  foreign  tyrant,  the  oppressor  whose  alien 
yoke  the  nations  of  Europe  were  yearning  to  throw  off.  The 
opposition  he  encountered  in  1815  was  one  of  governments, 
not  of  peoples.  Conservatism  took  arms  to  repel  the  attacks 
of  militant  Revolution.  It  was  the  “crowned  Jacobin”  whom 
Metternich  dreaded :  when  everything  seemed  satisfactorily 
settled  the  return  of  Napoleon  threatened  to  throw  reconstructed 
Germany  back  into  the  melting-pot  and  to  provoke  an  explosion 
of  the  forces  Metternich  thought  he  had  managed  to  stifle  and 
keep  down.  Prussia’s  point  of  view  was  different.  Prussia  was 
the  only  German  state  in  which  there  was  real  enthusiasm  for 
the  war.  To  Prussia  more  than  to  any  other  of  his  enemies 
Napoleon  had  been  the  oppressor ;  in  Prussia  the  hatred  of  him 
was  deepest  and  bitterest  and  the  cry  for  revenge  strongest  and 
most  insistent.  Moreover,  his  return  threatened  Prussia’s  recent 
acquisitions  on  the  Rhine,  and  the  nation  was  unanimous  in  its 
determination  to  retain  them.  The  King  appealed  to  the  nation, 
and  volunteers  flocked  forward  in  reply.  But  if  in  the  other 
states  which  formed  the  alliance  there  was  less  keenness  against 
Napoleon,  one  and  all  prepared  to  take  their  part  in  the  task  of 
carrying  out  the  sentence  pronounced  against  him. 

For  the  moment,  however,  it  was  impossible  to  undertake 
active  operations.  The  only  troops  immediately  available  were 
some  30,000  Prussians  who  formed  the  army  in  occupation  of 
the  new  territories  allotted  to  Prussia  on  the  Rhine,  10,000  British, 
the  troops  who  had  made  the  campaign  of  1814  in  the  Nether¬ 
lands  under  Sir  Thomas  Graham  and  still  remained  in  that 
country,2  14,000  Hanoverians  belonging  like  the  British  to 
the  army  which  was  occupying  the  Netherlands  pending  the 
conclusion  of  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  and  the  greater  part 
of  the  King’s  German  Legion,  which  had  been  collected  in 
Brabant  on  its  way  from  the  South  of  France  to  Hanover,  where 
it  was  to  be  disbanded.  It  supplied  about  3200  cavalry, 
600  artillery  and  4000  infantry,  while  another  8000  men  must 

1  Cf.  R.  M.  Johnston,  Napoleonic  Empire  in  Southern  Italy. 

2  Some  15  battalions  of  infantry,  for  the  most  part  very  weak,  and,  as  they  were 
second  battalions,  mainly  composed  of  raw  recruits. 


662  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


be  added  for  the  available  forces  of  the  Kingdom  of  the  Nether- 
lands.  The  total  of  these  forces  amounted  even  on  paper  to 
only  about  70,000,  and  they  were  so  heterogeneous  and  so  utterly 
unprepared  for  a  campaign  that  an  immediate  move  was  out 
of  the  question.  Thus  it  was  impossible  to  crush  Napoleon 
there  and  then;  and  while  the  Allies  were  gradually  collecting 
their  forces  from  all  quarters,  the  Austrians  from  the  Theiss 
and  Danube,  the  Russians  from  the  distant  Don  and  Dnieper, 
the  British  from  as  far  West  as  North  America,  to  which  quarter 
the  flower  of  the  Peninsular  army  had  been  sent,  Napoleon  had 
time  to  organise  an  effective  army  out  of  the  veterans  whom 
the  peace  had  released  from  their  confinement  in  Germany, 
England  and  Russia. 

Wellington  was  at  once  nominated  to  the  command  of  the 
Allied  army  in  the  Netherlands,  which  was  reinforced  by  all  the 
available  troops  from  Great  Britain  and  Hanover,  by  a  Brunswick 
contingent  rather  over  6000  strong,  by  a  brigade  of  2800  men 
from  Nassau,  and  by  considerable  forces  of  Dutch-Belgians.  At 
the  same  time  the  Prussian  army  was  rapidly  augmented  to 
a  strength  of  over  100,000;  but  it  included  a  strong  contingent 
of  Saxons  who  were  anything  but  well  affected  to  the  Allied 
cause,  and  whose  disaffection  resulted  before  the  campaign  opened 
in  open  mutiny,  while  the  population  of  the  Rhenish  districts 
recently  annexed  to  Prussia  contained  a  considerable  Franco- 
phil  faction.1  Behind  this  army,  which  was  placed  under  the 
command  of  Bliicher,  was  being  collected  a  Prussian  army  of 
reserve,  which  would  eventually  provide  about  70,000  men,  but 
would  not  be  ready  to  take  the  field  for  some  time.  Two  other 
armies  were  also  to  be  put  into  the  field,  one  of  Russians,  which 
was  making  its  way  across  Germany  in  three  columns,  amount¬ 
ing  in  all  to  160,000  men;  another  under  Schwarzenberg,  com¬ 
posed  of  a  nucleus  of  Austrians  together  with  the  contingents 
of  Bavaria,  Wiirtemberg  and  the  other  South  German  states, 
was  gathering  on  the  Upper  Rhine.2 

1  Cf.  Houssaye,  Waterloo ,  p.  85. 

2  Lord  Cathcart,  the  English  representative  at  Vienna,  made  great  endeavours  to 
have  the  contingents  of  Hesse-Cassel,  Hesse-Darmstadt  and  several  other  states 
placed  under  Wellington’s  command  ;  but  this  was  resolutely  opposed  by  von 
Knesebeck,  who  for  political  reasons  wished  them  to  serve  with  the  Prussians.  In 
the  end  the  Hesse-Darmstadt  contingent,  8000  strong,  was  attached  to  Schwarzen- 
berg’s  Army  of  the  Upper  Rhine,  most  of  that  of  Hesse-Cassel  was  allotted  to  the 
garrison  of  Mayence,  while  Baden  (16,000),  Bavaria  (60,000)  and  Wiirtemberg  (25,000) 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


663 


1815] 

But  these  two  last-mentioned  armies  could  not  possibly  be 
ready  to  begin  operations  till  the  end  of  June,  and  therefore 
the  Allies  had  to  choose  between  giving  Napoleon  all  that  time 
in  which  to  organise  the  resources  of  France  and,  if  they  pre¬ 
ferred  to  attack  him  while  his  preparations  were  far  from  com¬ 
plete,  doing  so  with  only  a  small  part  of  the  great  force  they 
would  eventually  have  at  their  disposal.  Wellington  at  first 
favoured  a  prompt  attack,  and  suggested  May  1st  for  beginning 
operations,  a  proposal  which  the  enterprising  Bliicher  cordially 
supported.  Austria  and  Russia,  however,  refused  to  entertain 
the  idea,  and  it  was  therefore  abandoned.1  Gneisenau  then  put 
forward  a  plan  closely  resembling  that  which  the  Allies  had 
adopted  in  1813.  By  it  three  armies  should  assemble  on  the 
Upper  Rhine,  the  Lower  Rhine  and  in  the  Netherlands,  with 
a  central  reserve  behind  them,  and  should  move  concurrently 
but  independently  on  Paris.  If  Napoleon  fell  on  one  of  these 
three  it  was  to  retire  on  the  reserve  and  the  other  two  were 
to  press  forward,  so  that  Napoleon  would  have  to  give  up  the 
pursuit  of  the  one  he  was  attacking  and  turn  aside  to  protect 
his  flanks  and  communications.2  Weighty  objections  were  urged 
against  this  scheme  ;  but  as  it  was  never  put  into  force  they  need 
not  be  discussed,  for  it  was  decided  to  wait  until  the  Russians 
and  Schwarzenberg  were  ready  to  co-operate  with  Wellington 
and  Bliicher,  a  choice  which  let  the  initiative  pass  from  the 
Allies  to  Napoleon. 

To  have  adopted  a  defensive  attitude  would  have  fitted  in 
best  with  the  peaceful  professions  Napoleon  had  made  on  his 
return  from  Elba :  had  he  waited  for  the  Allies  to  assume  the 
offensive,  he  could  have  represented  that  the  Powers  were  assail¬ 
ing  the  liberties  and  independence  of  France,  and  could  have 
appealed  to  the  sentiments  of  1792.  But  he  did  not  quite  trust 
the  French  democracy,  and  he  preferred  to  make  his  appeal 
to  the  military  spirit  and  to  the  national  love  of  glory  and 
conquest  with  which  he  had  identified  his  Empire,  rather  than 
to  Republican  traditions.  Moreover,  the  initiative  was  more  in 
keeping  with  his  active  and  enterprising  genius  than  was  the 

supplied  about  half  Schwarzenberg’s  army.  Thus  the  German  element  in  Welling¬ 
ton’s  army  was  smaller  than  it  should  have  been.  Cf.  Wellington’s  Supplementary 
Dispatches ,  vol.  x.  pp.  n-i4and  1 17-120. 

1  Cf.  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1S06-1871 ,  i.  567  ;  and  Houssaye,  pp.  90-92. 

2  Cf.  Supplementary  Dispatches ,  x.  172. 


664  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


tamer  defensive ;  he  hoped  by  a  speedy  success  over  the  English 
and  their  allies  in  the  Netherlands  to  rally  Belgium  to  his 
standard,  and  to  meet  the  main  armies  of  the  Coalition  with  all 
the  prestige  of  restored  victory.  Who  could  say  what  influence 
the  defeat  of  Wellington  and  Bliicher  might  exercise  on  the  old 
members  of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  or  even  on  Austria  ? 
Accordingly,  Napoleon  decided  to  take  the  offensive  before  the 
middle  of  June,  and  to  throw  the  125,000  men  who  formed  his 
available  field-army  on  the  point  where  the  left  of  Wellington’s 
cantonments  touched  the  right  of  Bliicher’s. 

This  critical  point  was,  roughly  speaking,  defined  by  the  great 
road  from  Charleroi  to  Brussels,  and  it  was  between  Avesnes 
and  Philippeville  to  the  South  of  Charleroi  that  the  French  were 
concentrated  by  the  evening  of  June  14th.  Napoleon’s  design 
was  to  attack  the  two  armies  of  Bliicher  and  Wellington 
separately  before  they  could  unite,  and  by  interposing  between 
them  and  thrusting  forward  on  Brussels,  to  push  them  apart 
as  he  had  the  Austro-Sardinians  in  1796.  He  calculated  that 
Bliicher,  if  beaten,  would  retire  Eastward,  towards  the  Meuse, 
and  that  Wellington’s  only  way  of  escape  from  disaster  would 
be  a  rapid  retreat  to  his  base,  Ostend. 

The  Waterloo  campaign  is  a  subject  so  thorny  and  so 
bristling  with  difficulties  that  one  naturally  shrinks  from  the 
attempt  to  tell  again  the  story  of  the  eventful  four  days 
(June  15th  to  18th)  which  saw  Napoleon,  despite  his  initial 
success  over  the  Prussians  at  Ligny,  utterly  and  completely 
beaten  when  those  same  Prussians,  whom  he  believed  that 
he  had  put  out  of  action,  came  back  to  the  aid  of  the  English 
and  their  allies.  Still  the  campaign  was  of  vital  importance 
to  Germany;  and  even  if  it  is  to  be  told  mainly  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  Prussian  army  and  its  share  in  the  campaign, 
it  is  impossible  to  attempt  even  that  without  relating  the  doings 
of  Wellington’s  army,  more  especially  of  the  Germans  under 
his  command,  or  without  discussing  to  some  extent  the  plans 
and  the  actions  of  Napoleon. 

In  the  first  place,  it  must  be  pointed  out  that  the  success 
of  Napoleon’s  plan  depended  mainly  on  the  promptitude  and 
precision  with  which  it  was  put  into  force,  that  the  attack  on  the 
Allied  centre  placed  Napoleon  at  the  point  at  which  it  was 
easiest  for  both  Allied  armies  to  come  into  action,  that  there  is 
a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  Wellington’s  view  that  the  Emperor 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


665 


1815] 

would  have  done  better  to  make  that  attack  on  the  English 
communications,  which  the  Duke  so  much  feared.  Had  he  done 
so,  Wellington  must  either  have  retreated  Northward,  abandoning 
his  direct  communications  with  Ostend,1  or  have  given  battle  on 
the  1 6th,  probably  somewhere  between  Ath  and  Hal,  without 
any  chance  of  Bliicher  coming  to  his  aid  in  force.2  By  attacking 
at  the  point  of  contact,  Napoleon  made  it  essential  that  he 
should  destroy  and  not  merely  defeat  the  army  on  which  his 
first  attack  fell,  and  that  he  should  lose  no  time  about  following 
up  the  advantages  he  might  gain. 

At  the  moment  Napoleon  delivered  his  attack,  the  Allied 
armies  were  certainly  dangerously  extended.  Both  Wellington 
and  Bliicher  were  misled  by  receiving  intelligence  from  France 
that  Napoleon  would  adopt  the  defensive,  and  the  French 
concentration  was  certainly  admirably  conducted,  inasmuch  as 
hardly  any  accurate  information  about  it  seems  to  have  leaked 
across  the  frontier.  Thus  June  15th  found  Wellington’s  head¬ 
quarters  and  his  reserve  (25,000  men)  at  or  near  Brussels  ;  his 
cavalry  corps  (10,000)  between  Ninove  and  Grammont ;  Hill’s 
corps  (27,000)  distributed  between  Ghent,  Ath,  Oudenarde  and 
Alost ;  that  of  the  Prince  of  Orange  (30000)  between  Mons, 
Seneffe,  Braine  le  Comte,  Nivelles  and  Genappe.3 

1  It  should  be  remembered  that  at  the  moment  the  campaign  opened  Wellington 
was  receiving  continual  reinforcements  from  England  by  way  of  Ostend.  Thus  Sir 
John  Lambert’s  brigade,  two  old  Peninsula  battalions,  1 /4th  and  i/40th,  and  one  which 
had  seen  service  on  the  East  coast  of  Spain,  1  /27th,  only  reached  the  field  of  Waterloo 
during  the  action,  having  come  up  from  Ghent  by  forced  marches  ;  the  7th,  29th  and 
43rd,  three  strong  battalions  which  had  been  among  the  best  of  the  whole  Peninsula 
army,  landed  at  Ostend  on  June  1 8th,  June  13th  and  June  16th  respectively,  indeed 
the  29th  actually  got  near  enough  to  hear  the  guns  of  Waterloo. 

2  A  containing  force  of  the  strength  of  that  detached  under  Grouchy  after  Ligny 
would  have  sufficed  to  keep  at  bay  the  corps  of  Ziethen,  which  would  have  been  all 
the  Prussian  commander  could  have  brought  up  on  the  16th.  Tirch  and  Thielmann, 
who  only  reached  Sombreffe  about  11  a.m.  and  1  p.m.  respectively  on  the  16th, 
could  not  have  exercised  much  influence  over  a  battle  Westward  of  Nivelles  on  that 
day. 

3  Of  this  force  about  69,000  were  infantry,  the  British  providing  29  battalions 
with  a  total  of  20,310,  the  King’s  German  Legion  8  battalions  (3285  men), 
the  Hanoverians  23  battalions  (13,788  men),  the  Brunswickers  8  battalions 
(5376  men),  the  contingents  of  Nassau  and  Orange-Nassau  8  battalions  (7100),  5 
of  which  were  included  in  a  Dutch-Belgian  division,  the  Dutch-Belgian  contingent 
of  33  battalions  being  19,674  strong.  The  cavalry  came  to  14,500,  5913  of 
whom  (16  regiments)  were  British,  5  regiments  mustering  in  all  2560  belonged  to  the 
King’s  German  Legion,  3  were  Hanoverians,  one  and  a  squadron  of  Uhlans  came 
from  Brunswick,  7  were  Dutch-Belgians.  The  army  included  32  batteries  of 


666  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


Blticher  had  his  headquarters  at  Namur,  his  army  being 
divided  into  four  corps,  of  which  that  of  Ziethen  was  nearest  to 
the  threatened  point,  being  distributed  between  Thuin,  Charleroi, 
Marchienne,  Moustiers  and  Fleurus.  The  next  corps,  that  of 
Pirch,  was  at  Namur,  with  portions  at  Heron,  Huy  and  Hannut. 
Thielmann’s  corps,  distributed  between  Ciney,  Dinant  and  Huy, 
was  a  good  deal  farther  from  the  critical  spot ;  and  Bulow’s, 
at  and  around  Liege,  was  not  less  than  45  miles  from  the 
place  appointed  for  the  concentration.  This  was  Sombreffe, 
about  14  miles  from  Namur  and  the  same  distance  from 
Charleroi,  to  which  place  it  must  be  pronounced  to  have  been 
dangerously  near,  seeing  how  widely  the  Prussian  cantonments 
were  scattered.  If  Wellington’s  cantonments  also  were  too  far 
apart,  he  did  not  commit  the  mistake  of  selecting  as  the  point 
of  concentration  a  position  so  far  advanced  as  Sombreffe : 
Blticher  must  be  accounted  lucky  in  that  Napoleon  did  not,  by 
attacking  a  little  earlier  on  the  16th,  overthrow  Ziethen’s  corps 
before  those  of  Pirch  and  Thielmann  could  arrive. 

The  Prusssian  army  was  rather  larger  than  that  underWelling- 
ton.  Three  of  its  four  corps  averaged  about  31,000,  the  fourth, 
that  of  Thielmann,  being  only  24,000  strong.  This  was  due  to 
the  mutiny  of  the  Saxon  troops  originally  belonging  to  it.  These 
troops,  when  it  had  been  proposed  to  allot  the  soldiers  individu¬ 
ally  to  the  Prussian  or  to  the  Saxon  service  in  conformity  with 
the  distribution  of  the  districts  they  came  from  between  Prussia 
and  Saxony,  had  broken  out  into  open  revolt,  “  declaring  that 

artillery,  18  British,  3  K.  G.  L.,  2  Hanoverian,  2  Brunswick  and  7  Dutch- 
Belgian  :  these  varied  from  4  to  8  guns,  and  in  all  provided  204  pieces.  This  did  not 
complete  Wellington’s  force,  as  he  had  under  his  command,  though  not  in  the  fighting 
line,  von  der  Decken’s  Hanoverian  Reserve  Corps,  13  battalions  or  9000  men,  while 
6  British  battalions  on  garrison  duty  amounted  to  3200  more.  Of  these  troops  the 
British  and  King’s  German  Legion  were  by  far  the  best,  18  battalions  and  12  cavalry 
regiments  of  the  British  having  served  in  the  Peninsula,  as  had  also  5  battalions  and 
all  the  cavalry  of  the  German  Legion,  though  even  these  corps  had  a  good  many 
recruits  in  their  ranks.  The  Planoverians  were  nearly  all  young  troops,  and  most  of 
them  Landwelir ;  and  much  the  same  was  the  state  of  the  Brunswickers.  Three  of 
the  Nassau  battalions  had  served  in  Spain,  but  on  Napoleon’s  side,  they  being  the 
troops  which  had  come  over  to  Wellington  before  Bayonne  in  December  1813.  The 
Dutch-Belgians  were  the  least  efficient  part  of  the  army  :  many  of  them,  including 
practically  all  the  officers,  had  been  in  the  French  service,  and  their  zeal  for  the 
Allied  cause  was  worse  than  doubtful.  Their  conduct  during  the  campaign  was  such 
as  to  make  them  an  element  of  weakness  rather  than  of  strength  to  their  commander, 
and  Wellington  would  have  gained  could  he  have  exchanged  them  for  a  much 
smaller  number  of  British  troops  or  even  of  Hanoverian  Landwehr , 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


667 


1815] 

they  were  the  soldiers  of  the  King  of  Saxony,  and  would  serve 
no  other  cause.” 1  The  mutiny  was  repressed,  the  Saxon  Guards 
and  the  two  Grenadier  battalions  implicated  were  disbanded, 
several  of  the  ringleaders  were  shot ;  and  as  the  whole  body  of 
the  Saxon  troops,  15,000  men  in  all,  continued  unanimous  in 
their  opposition  to  the  transfer,  it  was  finally  decided  to  send 
them  all  back  to  Westphalia.2  Thus  Thielmann’s  corps  was  short 
of  the  4500  to  which  the  brigade  it  had  been  proposed  to  form 
out  of  the  transferred  Saxons  should  have  amounted.  In 
support  of  the  Prussian  army  a  corps  of  some  20,000  men  was 
being  collected  at  Treves,  composed  of  the  contingents  of 
Mecklenburg,  Anhalt,  Reuss,  Lippe  and  other  minor  states  of 
North  Germany ;  but  it  was  not  called  upon  to  take  any  active 
part  in  the  campaign. 

The  concentration  of  the  French  had  not  been  effected 
without  some  indication  of  it  reaching  the  Allies,  but  the  informa¬ 
tion  which  Wellington  received  on  June  14th  from  the  Belgian 
van  der  Merlen  at  Binche,  and  from  Major-General  von  Dornberg 
who  commanded  the  British  cavalry  brigade  in  front  of  Mons, 
was  not  sufficiently  definite  to  do  more  than  put  him  on  the  alert. 
The  news  that  French  columns  were  massing  in  the  direction 
of  Avesnes,  and  that  they  seemed  to  be  withdrawing  from 
opposite  Wellington’s  right,  might  only  be  an  elaborate  blind  to 
conceal  the  stroke  against  his  communications  which  the  British 
commander  feared.  Meanwhile  Bliicher  hearing  from  Ziethen 
late  on  the  14th  that  the  French  were  gathering  in  his  front, 
sent  orders  to  Pirch  to  move  to  Sombreffe,  to  Thielmann  to 
come  up  to  Namur,  and  to  Billow  to  concentrate  at  Hannut. 

Next  morning  (June  15th)  the  French  advance  began. 
Napoleon  had  collected  a  force  superior  in  average  quality  to 
either  of  the  armies  opposed  to  him,  but  one  which,  as  M. 
Ploussaye  shows,3  was  as  little  to  be  relied  upon  in  some  ways 
as  it  was  formidable  in  others.  In  numbers  it  was  superior  to 
either  of  its  enemies,  inferior  to  the  two  combined  in  the 
proportion  of  3  to  5. 4  It  included  the  Guard,  over  20,000  strong, 
four  corps  of  cavalry  amounting  to  13,000  men,  and  five  of 
infantry  varying  from  the  25,000  of  Reille’s  corps  to  the  11,000 

1  Supplementary  Dispatches ,  x.  p.  220. 

2  Ih id.  x.  pp.  238-240,  245,  and  266.  3  P.  83. 

4  Wellington’s  army  may  be  put  at  about  90,000  effectives,  Bliicher’s  at  115,000, 

Napoleon’s  at  125,000. 


668  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


of  Lobau’s.  It  was  much  better  supplied  with  artillery  than 
was  Wellington,  and  somewhat  better  than  were  the  Prussians. 

On  June  15th  the  French  got  on  the  move  about  daybreak, 
marching  in  three  columns  on  Marchienne  au  Pont,  on  Charleroi, 
and  on  Chatelet.  Very  early  they  came  into  contact  with 
Ziethen’s  outposts,  which  gave  way  before  them  not  without 
some  brisk  skirmishing.  Between  9  and  10  a.m.  the  French 
columns  reached  the  Sambre,  Reille’s  vanguard  under  Bachelu 
at  Marchienne,  Pajol,  who  led  the  centre  column,  at  Charleroi. 
Here  they  were  checked  for  a  time;  but  about  midday  both 
passages  were  secured,  and  Steinmetz  from  Thuin  and  Pirch  II 
from  Charleroi  were  retiring  by  Gosselies  and  Fleurus  on 
Ligny,  where  the  other  two  divisions  of  Ziethen’s  corps  were 
concentrating.1  The  French  plans  had  been  somewhat  upset  by 
Vandamme’s  lateness  in  starting,  a  delay  due  to  his  orders  not 
having  reached  him,  and  similarly  d’Erlon  and  Gdrard  failed  to 
carry  out  punctually  the  movements  prescribed  to  them.  Thus 
Steinmetz  was  able  to  make  good  his  retreat  to  Fleurus,  despite 
Reille’s  efforts  to  intercept  him.  To  this  success  Pirch  Il’s 
stubborn  stand  at  Gilly  from  about  2  to  6  p.m.  contributed 
materially,  as  he  prevented  Pajol’s  cavalry  from  pushing  forward 
along  the  direct  road  to  Fleurus.  However,  when  Vandamme 
at  last  delivered  his  attack,  the  division  had  some  difficulty  in 
extricating  itself  and  retiring  to  Fleurus.  As  the  Prussians 
started  to  go  to  the  rear  they  were  assailed  by  the  French 
cavalry ;  one  battalion  was  ridden  over  and  cut  to  pieces, 
another  escaped  only  by  forming  square  and  cutting  its  way 
through  its  assailants  into  the  shelter  of  the  woods.  Yet,  badly 
as  the  division  was  mauled,  Ziethen’s  corps  had  certainly  done 
well  in  withdrawing  from  its  extended  positions  and  concentrat¬ 
ing  between  Ligny  and  St.  Amand  with  the  loss  of  only  1200 
men  killed,  wounded  and  prisoners.  It  had  performed  its  task 
of  delaying  the  French  advance  with  very  fair  success,  the  time 
gained  was  of  great  value,  but  it  was  unfortunate  that  Ziethen 
should  have  neglected  the  principal  duty  of  the  commander  of 
an  outpost  screen  such  as  that  formed  by  his  corps,  namely,  that 
of  forwarding  complete  and  prompt  information  of  what  is  going 
on  at  the  front  to  the  commanders  of  the  main  forces  whose 

1  Each  Prussian  corps  was  made  up  of  four  so-called  “brigades,”  corresponding 
in  strength  rather  to  the  divisions  of  the  Anglo-Dutch  army,  so  that  it  is  less  misleading 
to  describe  them  as  “  divisions.” 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


669 


1815] 

concentration  he  was  covering.  He  had,  it  is  true,  sent  off 
a  messenger  to  Blucher  directly  the  first  shots  were  heard 
in  his  front  (5  a.m.),  and  a  message  seems  to  have  been  sent 
to  Wellington  about  8  a.m. ; 1  but  to  Ziethen’s  neglect  to 
send  any  further  news  must  be  mainly  attributed  the  slow¬ 
ness  of  the  British  concentration.  Wellington,  hearing  no 
more  of  the  attack  on  Ziethen,  had  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
it  was  more  than  a  feint,  and  still  believed  that  the  real  attack 
would  come  on  his  right.  The  Prince  of  Orange  arrived  about 
3  p.m.  with  news  that  the  Prussian  outposts  were  falling  back, 
but  he  had  left  the  front  about  10  a.m.  before  the  French  attack 
had  thoroughly  developed,  and  his  information  was  hardly 
conclusive  ;  thus  orders  for  the  concentration  of  the  army  at 
Nivelles  were  not  given  till  after  7  p.m.,  when  at  last  a  despatch 
saying  that  all  was  quiet  on  the  side  of  Mons  arrived  from 
Dornberg.  The  latter’s  share  of  the  responsibility  for  the  delay 
in  the  concentration  is  no  small  one,  for  his  failure  to  send  earlier 
information  in  conjunction  with  Ziethen’s  neglect  left  the  Duke 
uncertain  as  to  the  true  line  of  the  advance.  Certainly  some 
valuable  hours  might  have  been  saved  had  Ziethen  done  his 
duty  in  sending  full  and  constant  information  so  as  to  show 
Wellington  that  the  attack  near  Charleroi  was  the  real  thing. 

Meanwhile  the  Ilnd  Prussian  Corps  had  by  the  evening 
of  the  15th  come  up  almost  to  Sombreffe  and  was  at  hand  to 
support  Ziethen  ;  while  Thielmann,  who  had  reached  Namur,  was 
only  about  15  miles  away.  Biilow,  however,  largely  through 
Gneisenau’s  fault,2  had  failed  to  do  more  than  make  arrange¬ 
ments  to  concentrate  at  Hannut  on  the  morning  of  the  16th, 
which  had  made  it  certain  that  the  IVth  Corps  would  take  no 
part  in  any  action  that  might  be  fought  on  the  16th. 

Thus  at  nightfall  on  June  15th  the  position  of  the  Allies  was 
none  too  satisfactory.  Wellington’s  concentration  had  not 
begun ;  Blucher  had  only  two  of  his  corps  together,  and  they 
were  in  dangerous  proximity  to  the  French.  Luckily  for  the 
Allies,  however,  the  French  movements  had  not  been  all  that 
the  Emperor  desired.  Bad  Staff  work  had  been  the  cause  of 
several  delays;  Vandamme,  d’Erlon  and  Reille  had  all  started 
behind  time,  and  thus  Napoleon’s  intention  of  occupying  Quatre 

1  Dispatches ,  xii.  473. 

2  Cf.  J.  von  Pflugk  -  Harttung,  Vorgeschichte  der  Schlacht  der  Belle  -  Alliance, 
pp.  252  ft 


670  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


Bras  and  Fleurus  had  not  been  accomplished.  On  the  right, 
where  Grouchy  was  in  command,  the  vanguard  of  cavalry  was  just 
short  of  Fleurus,  with  Vandamme  a  little  way  behind.  Gerard’s 
corps  was  not  yet  over  the  Sambre.  In  the  centre,  Lobau  had 
still  to  cross  the  river,  the  Old  Guard  was  between  Charleroi  and 
Gilly,  the  Young  Guard  had  reached  Gilly.  On  the  left  the 
cavalry  had  not  got  beyond  Frasnes;  Reille’s  infantry  were 
between  Mellet,  Wangenies  and  Gosselies ;  d’Erlon  had  two 
divisions  nearly  up  to  Gosselies>  but  two  still  on  the  Sambre. 
What  had  happened  in  this  quarter  was  that  after  Steinmetz  had 
cleared  his  way  past  Gosselies  to  Heppignies  and  Fleurus  by  a 
bold  counter-attack  on  the  advance-guard  of  Reille’s  corps,1 
Ney,  who  commanded  the  left  wing  of  the  French,  had  not 
pushed  on  in  force  towards  Quatre  Bras,  judging  reasonably 
enough  that  it  would  be  inexpedient  to  thrust  forward  too  far 
in  front  of  the  rest  of  the  army.  Thus  only  some  cavalry  had 
got  as  far  as  Frasnes  which  they  found  occupied  by  a  battalion 
of  the  2nd  Regiment  of  Nassau.  This  battalion  stood  firm,  and 
the  French  had  to  send  back  for  infantry  support.  The  delay 
allowed  Prince  Bernhard  of  Saxe- Weimar  to  bring  the  regiment 
of  Orange-Nassau  up  from  Genappe,2  and  so  bold  was  the  front 
he  showed  that,  after  some  skirmishing,  Ney  decided  not  to 
attempt  to  capture  Quatre  Bras  that  evening.3  Thus  though 
the  day  had  on  the  whole  favoured  the  French,  though  they  had 
established  themselves  in  close  proximity  to  the  line  on  which 
the  Allies  proposed  to  carry  out  their  still  incomplete  concentra¬ 
tion,  they  had  not  made  all  the  progress  needed  to  assure 
success.  The  morning  of  the  16th  found  them  anything  but 
ready  for  an  immediate  attack  either  on  the  Prussians  or  on 
Wellington,  and  the  six  hours’  delay  which  followed  was  all- 
important  in  deciding  the  fortunes  of  the  campaign. 

Indeed  it  was  not  till  June  16th  was  well  advanced  that 
further  fighting  took  place.  Vandamme  did  not  bring  his  corps 
up  into  position  opposite  the  Prussians  till  after  10  a.m.,  and 

1  Circa  3  p.m.  2  About  6.30  p.m. 

3  Prince  Bernhard,  who  had  acted  on  his  own  responsibility,  had  only  anticipated 
the  orders  of  General  Perponcher,  the  divisional  commander ;  and  it  would  seem  that 
Quatre  Bras  had  been  named  as  the  point  for  the  brigade  to  concentrate,  for  another 
battalion  of  the  2nd  Nassau  came  up  independently  from  Bezy  (Siborne,  p.  1 1 7) ;  but 
nevertheless  the  Prince’s  action  and  that  of  Major  Normann  and  his  battalion  of  the 
2nd  Nassau  deserve  much  credit.  Though  officially  part  of  the  Dutch-Belgian  army, 
these  troops  should  rather  be  regarded  as  Germans. 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


671 


1815] 

Gerard  was  three  hours  behind  him.  About  1 1  a.m.  Napoleon 
arrived  on  the  scene  from  Charleroi.  The  scheme  which  he 
had  formed  overnight  was  based  on  the  assumption  that  the 
retreat  of  the  Prussian  outposts  to  the  North-East  pointed  to  an 
intention  to  retire  towards  their  base,  Liege  and  Maastricht,  and 
to  abandon  the  attempt  to  combine  with  Wellington,  who  the 
Emperor  concluded  must  be  in  full  retreat  on  Antwerp  or  Ostend. 
Thus  he  did  not  expect  any  serious  fighting  on  the  1  (5th ;  he 
meant  to  push  his  right  forward  as  far  as  Gembloux,  driving  in 
any  rearguard  the  Prussians  might  leave  at  Sombreffe  and  then 
to  transfer  his  central  reserve  to  the  left  wing  and  reinforce  Ney, 
who  was  meanwhile  to  have  adopted  a  waiting  attitude  at  Ouatre 
Bras.  This  done,  Napoleon  meant  to  advance  straight  on 
Brussels,  which  he  expected  to  reach  in  the  morning  of  the  17th. 
This  plan  was  completely  upset  by  Bliicher’s  resolve  to  stand  at 
Ligny,  a  resolve  to  which  the  Prussian  commander  clung  even 
when  he  discovered  that  Billow’s  disobedience  would  deprive 
him  of  over  a  quarter  of  his  force.  Nor  does  the  decision  appear 
to  have  been  prompted  by  any  hope,  much  less  by  any  definite 
promise,  of  help  from  Wellington.1  BlUcher  certainly  hoped 
Wellington  would  arrive,  but  his  mind  had  been  made  up  long 
before  his  interview  about  noon  with  the  Duke,  whose  promise 
of  help  was  purely  conditional  on  his  not  being  attacked  himself. 

The  Emperor  thus  found  that  instead  of  a  rearguard  action 
with  a  force  trying  to  cover  the  Prussian  retreat,  he  would  have 
to  fight  a  battle  on  a  considerable  scale,  for  which  he  was 
not  yet  ready.  Though  Ziethen’s  corps  alone  was  actually  in 
position  between  Ligny  and  St.  Amand,  Pirch’s  was  just  arriv¬ 
ing  ;  and  Thielmann,  who  had  left  Namur  at  7  a.m.,  came  up 
shortly  after  midday,  though  it  was  not  till  between  two  and 
three  that  his  whole  force  arrived.  Still,  even  with  only  Ziethen 
in  his  front,  the  Emperor  was  not  prepared  to  attack  without  a 
rather  larger  force  than  the  24,000  to  which  Vandamme  and  the 
cavalry  of  Pajol  and  Excelmans  amounted.  Accordingly  the 

1  The  attempt  of  Herr  Delbriick  in  his  Life  of  Gneisenau  to  prove  that  Blucher 
was  relying  on  Wellington’s  assistance,  and  would  not  otherwise  have  fought  at  Ligny, 
is  quite  unsuccessful.  Cf.  Houssaye,  p.  142  ;  also  Vorgeschichte  der  Schlacht  der 
Belle- Alliance ,  by  J.  von  Pflugk-Harttung,  quite  the  most  judicial  and  unbiassed 
German  account  of  these  events  ;  the  instalment  of  the  Geschichte  der  Befreiungs 
Krieg ,  which  deals  with  1815,  Herr  von  Lettow-Vor beck’s  Napoleons  Untergang , 
unfortunately  reproduces  the  Prussian  “legend  of  Waterloo”  in  its  most  extreme 
form. 


672  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


attack  had  to  be  put  off  till  Gerard’s  corps  had  deployed  into 
line,  and  its  leading  columns  did  not  appear  till  after  one.  The 
delay  was  of  the  utmost  value  to  the  Prussians,  for  long  before 
the  attack  was  delivered  Pirch  had  taken  up  his  position  in 
support  of  Ziethen,  and  most  of  Thielmann’s  men  had  arrived, 
and  thus  Bluchers  uncovered  left  had  been  secured. 

The  Prussian  position  was  not  one  of  any  great  strength. 
It  consisted  of  the  heights  of  Bry,  Sombreffe  and  Tongrines, 
which  lie  along  the  Northern  bank  of  the  Ligny  brook ;  on  its 
right  it  was  bounded  by  a  ravine  down  which  a  smaller  rivulet 
hows  into  the  stream,  and  a  similar  ravine  flowing  from  the 
village  of  Botey  into  the  Ligny  brook  marked  the  natural  limit 
of  the  position  on  the  left.  The  Ligny  brook,  however,  does 
not  flow  in  a  straight  line,  but,  after  running  to  the  North-East 
through  St.  Amand  and  Ligny,  bends  due  East  at  the  hamlet  of 
Mont  Potriaux  just  South  of  Sombreffe,  and  then  curving  round 
to  the  South  past  Tongrines  at  one  time  actually  flows  South- 
Westward.  Near  the  village  of  Boignee,  however,  it  bends  again 
to  the  East,  to  end  by  joining  the  Ormeau  near  Mazy,  the  spot 
where  the  Namur-Nivelles  road  crosses  that  tributary  of  the 
Sambre.  The  centre,  therefore,  of  an  army  taking  post  on  the 
Northern  bank  of  this  stream  is  much  “refused,”  the  wings 
being  thrust  forward,  especially  the  right  wing  at  the  Western 
end  of  the  position.  Dotted  all  over  these  heights  and  along 
the  course  of  the  Ligny  brook  and  its  affluents  are  various 
villages  and  hamlets,  some,  like  Ligny  and  St.  Amand,  of  fair 
size,  others,  as,  for  example,  Balatre  and  Tongrenelles,  quite  small. 
These  provided  much  cover  for  a  defending  force,  and  were  the 
pivots  on  which  the  action  was  bound  to  turn. 

Part  of  Ziethen’s  corps,  which  formed  the  Prussian  right, 
was  flung  back  en  potencc  along  the  line  of  the  rivulet  which 
joins  the  larger  brook  at  St.  Amand,  so  as  to  face  South-West 
and  protect  St.  Amand  and  Ligny  against  a  flank  attack.  This 
face  of  the  position,  with  the  villages  of  Hameau  St.  Amand, 
Wagnelee  and  St.  Amand  la  Haye,  was  entrusted  to  Stein- 
metz’s  division.  St.  Amand  itself  was  held  by  3  battalions  of 
Jagow’s,  the  other  6  of  which  were  being  in  reserve;  in  Ligny 
were  4  battalions  of  Henckel,  whose  other  2  were  on  the  slopes 
behind  the  village,  Pirch  Il’s  division  being  in  reserve  near  Bry 
and  the  mill  of  Bussy.  The  cavalry  on  being  driven  in  from  the 
front  took  post  between  Jagow  and  Pirch. 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


673 


1815] 

The  importance  which  Bllicher  attached  to  his  right  may 
be  judged  from  the  fact  that  the  entire  Ilnd  Corps,  Pirch  i’s, 
was  drawn  up  in  support  of  Ziethen  along  the  Namur-Nivelies 
road  just  west  of  Sombreffe.  The  centre  was  formed  by 
Borcke’s  division  of  Thielmann,  posted  near  Sombreffe  with  a 
battalion  at  Mont  Potriaux,  the  rest  of  the  Illrd  Corps  being 
more  to  the  left,  with  battalions  in  Tongrines,  Tongrenelles, 
Boignee  and  Balatre,  and  the  cavalry  under  von  Hobe  covering 
the  extreme  left  of  the  position. 

Unfortunately  for  Bllicher  the  slopes  south  of  the  Ligny 
brook  were  slightly  higher  than  those  on  which  his  army  was 
posted,  so  that  it  was  very  difficult  to  conceal  his  movements 
from  the  enemy,  and  his  reserves  were  throughout  exposed  to  a 
cannonade:  to  get  cover  he  must  have  posted  them  so  far  back 
that  they  would  have  found  it  almost  impossible  to  lend  timely 
support  to  the  fighting  line  along  the  brook.  The  ground 
certainly  was  most  unfavourable  from  a  tactical  point  of  view, 
it  provided  practically  no  cover ;  and  the  defects  in  the  posting 
of  the  Prussian  army  did  not  escape  the  notice  of  Wellington, 
who  about  noon  came  over  from  Quatre  Bras  to  consult  with 
Blucher.  In  vain  he  urged  his  colleague  to  alter  his  dispositions  ; 
Bllicher  would  not  hear  of  it,  with  the  result  that  Wellington’s 
curt  comment  to  Hardinge,  “  If  they  fight  here  they  will  be 
damnably  mauled,”  was  proved  only  too  true  a  prophecy  before 
the  day  was  out.  Besides  this,  the  position  was  too  long  for  the 
numbers  available  to  defend  it,  and  being  without  any  definite 
boundary  to  its  right  rear  was  liable  to  be  turned  from  the 
direction  of  Frasnes. 

About  2.30  p.m.  the  attack  was  begun.  Vandamme  assailed 
St.  Amand,  Gerard  hurled  Pecheux’s  division  upon  Ligny, 
Grouchy’s  cavalry  supported  by  another  of  Gerard’s  divisions 
engaged  the  Prussian  left  and  by  demonstrations  against 
Balatre  and  Tongrines  kept  a  large  part  of  Thielmann’s  corps 
occupied.  The  struggle  for  the  villages  was  long,  desperate 
and  even.  Time  after  time  the  French  were  forced  back  only 
to  return  to  the  assault.  At  the  fourth  attack  on  Ligny,  Pecheux, 
supported  by  a  brigade  of  the  remaining  division  of  the  IVth 
Corps,  obtained  possession  of  the  portion  of  the  village  which 
lies  on  the  upper  or  South  bank  of  the  stream.  In  vain 
Henckel’s  reserve  battalions  joined  in  the  fight,  the  French 
pressed  on  and  effected  a  lodgment  on  the  farther  bank,  only 
43 


674  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


to  be  driven  back  across  the  stream  when  Jiigow  brought  up 
the  greater  part  of  the  Third  Division.  More  and  more  re¬ 
inforcements  were  thrown  into  the  fight  on  both  sides :  Krafft 
of  the  Ilnd  Corps  replaced  Henckel’s  broken  battalions, 
Gerard  hurled  Vichery’s  remaining  brigade  at  Lower  Ligny 
and  gradually  gained  ground.  In  despair  Krafft  appealed  for 
reinforcements,  but  for  the  moment  Bliicher  had  none  to  send 
( circa  5  p.m.). 

Meanwhile  Vandamme  had  begun  by  ousting  the  three 
battalions  of  Jagow’s  division  from  St.  Amand.  Succoured  by 
Steinmetz  they  returned  to  the  charge,  and  Vandamme  had  to 
deploy  Berthezdne’s  division  on  the  left  of  Lefol’s  and  to  send 
Girards  of  the  Ilnd  Corps,  which  had  come  up  from  Ransart 
to  join  in  the  attack,  against  the  villages  which  lie  to  the 
North-West  of  St.  Amand.  These  villages,  La  Haye,  Hameau 
St.  Amand  and  WagneHe,  Girard  carried  at  the  first  rush ;  a 
success  which  filled  Bliicher  with  anxiety,  for  he  attached  the 
utmost  importance  to  preventing  the  French  from  turning  his 
right  and  so  severing  his  communications  with  Wellington. 
He  therefore  hurled  the  last  unengaged  division  of  Ziethen’s 
corps,  that  of  Pirch  II,  directly  against  Girard,  and  prepared 
to  turn  his  flank  by  sending  against  WagneHe,  Tippelskirch’s 
division  of  the  Ilnd  Corps  supported  by  Jiirgass  with  Pirch  I’s 
cavalry. 

Pirch  II  had  some  success.  He  shook  Girard’s  hold  on  La 
Haye,  and  only  by  a  prodigious  effort  did  the  French  general 
rally  his  troops  and  recover  the  village,  perishing  himself  just 
as  the  Prussians  gave  way.  The  flanking  movement  was  less 
successful.  Surprised  in  column  of  march  before  they  could 
deploy,  Tippelskirch’s  infantry  were  thrown  back  in  disorder, 
and  Jiirgass  was  unable  to  effect  anything  in  face  of  Domon 
and  the  light  cavalry  of  Vandamme’s  corps. 

Now  it  was  (about  5  o’clock)  that  Bliicher  himself  hurried 
to  his  right,  rallied  Pirch  II,  supported  him  with  battalions  from 
the  Ilnd  Corps,  and  sent  him  forward  again  against  La  Haye,  at 
the  same  time  relieving  Steinmetz,  whose  efforts  to  recover  St. 
Amand  had  resulted  in  the  complete  exhaustion  of  his  division, 
and  rallying  Tippelskirch.  These  efforts  were  rewarded  by  the 
recapture  of  La  Haye,  from  which  the  relics  of  Girard’s  division 
were  again  driven  ;  but  at  Hameau  St.  Amand  they  rallied  and 
made  a  stand.  More  reinforcements  were  needed,  and  Bliicher 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


675 


1815] 

had  to  fetch  up  the  last  reserves  of  the  Ilnd  Corps,  several 
battalions  of  which  had  become  involved  in  the  carnage  in  Ligny. 
The  repeated  calls  on  his  reserve  had  reduced  it  to  vanishing 
point,  and  to  fill  the  position  in  front  of  Sombrefife,  left  vacant 
by  Langen’s  division  (of  the  Ilnd  Corps)  moving  to  the  right  to 
join  in  the  struggle  for  St.  Amand,  part  of  Thiel m an n’s  corps 
had  to  move  up  from  the  left.  It  would  certainly  seem  that  the 
Prussian  commander  was  overhasty  in  throwing  in  his  reserves 
and  in  withdrawing  battalions  to  the  rear  before  their  condition 
became  absolutely  desperate,  unless,  indeed,  he  had  not  the  same 
confidence  in  his  men’s  endurance  that  Wellington  had  in  the 
staying  powers  of  his  British  and  Legionaries.  Certainly  the 
last  Prussian  reserves  were  utilised  at  a  far  earlier  period  in  the 
battle  of  Ligny  than  was  to  be  the  case  with  the  Anglo-Allied 
army  at  Waterloo  two  days  later.  Wellington  no  doubt  posted 
his  men  better,  and  thereby  exposed  them  less  and  demanded 
rather  less  from  them ;  but  Bliicher  was  certainly  rather  precipitate 
in  utilising  his  reserves.  Nor  has  the  Prussian  general’s  use  of 
his  reserves  escaped  well-merited  censure.1  Situated  as  he  was, 
offensive  tactics  were  hardly  suitable  until  Biilow  or  some  portion 
of  Wellington’s  army  came  to  his  succour.  Yet  instead  of 
confining  himself  to  the  defensive  and  beating  off  the  attacks  of 
the  French,  Bliicher  had  resolved  to  take  the  offensive  with  his 
right.  Accordingly,  just  before  6  o’clock,  Tippelskirch  and 
Jiirgass  advanced  again  by  Wagnelde  against  the  French  flank, 
and  Pirch  II  supported  by  Brause  and  some  of  Krafft’s  battalions 
assailed  St.  Amand  and  the  other  villages.  Girard’s  division, 
reduced  to  less  than  half  its  original  strength,  fell  back  from 
Hameau  St.  Amand.  Lefol  and  Berthezene  were  unable  to 
maintain  their  hold  on  St.  Amand  itself,  for  the  sudden  appear¬ 
ance  of  strange  columns  in  the  direction  of  Mellet  had  caused 
a  panic  among  their  men. 

It  was  the  approach  of  this  unknown  quantity  and  the 
consequent  retreat  of  Vandamme  before  the  attacks  of  Brause 
and  Pirch  which  compelled  Napoleon  to  suspend  the  decisive 
blow  he  had  been  on  the  point  of  delivering.  He  had  not  failed 
to  notice  that  Bliicher  had  diverted  every  available  bayonet  to 
the  Prussian  right,  and  that  the  Prussian  reserves  were  practi¬ 
cally  all  engaged,  and  he  was  preparing  to  launch  the  Guard  and 
Milhaud’s  cuirassiers  against  Bluchers  weakened  centre,  when 

1  Cf.  Siborne,  p.  257. 


676  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


the  news  from  his  left  forced  him  to  desist,  and  to  send  Duhesme 
with  the  Young  Guard  and  three  regiments  of  the  Middle  Guard 
to  the  help  of  Vandamme. 

But  the  strangers  were  not,  as  had  at  first  been  imagined, 
Wellington’s  men  coming  to  complete  a  victory  over  Ney  by 
playing  a  decisive  part  in  the  contest  at  Ligny.  It  was  the 
corps  of  d’Erlon  whose  unexpected  appearance  in  that  quarter 
had  so  disconcerted  its  comrades.  The  1st  Corps  had  been  late 
starting  from  its  bivouacs  South  of  Gosselies,  and  its  leading 
columns  had  not  yet  reached  Frasnes  when,  about  4.15  p.m., 
Colonel  Forbin-Janson  handed  to  d’Erlon  the  Emperor’s  order, 
sent  off  at  3.30  p.m.,  directing  him  to  move  towards  St.  Amand. 
Had  d’Erlon  been  as  far  forward  as  the  Emperor  supposed  him 
to  be,  a  move  on  St.  Amand  would  have  brought  him  up  in  rear 
of  the  Prussian  right ;  as  it  was,  his  direct  route  to  St.  Amand 
involved  his  appearing  in  Vandamme’s  rear.  But  the  misfortunes 
of  the  1st  Corps  were  not  yet  at  an  end.  Forbin-Janson  had 
failed  to  proceed  to  Ney’s  headquarters  and  to  acquaint  the 
Marshal  with  the  change  in  d’Erlon’s  orders,  and  Ney  only  heard 
of  the  movement  from  one  of  d’Erlon’s  Staff  officers  without 
receiving  any  explanation  of  it  from  the  Emperor.  Accordingly 
he  hastened  to  recall  d’Erlon  towards  Quatre  Bras  ;  and  his 
messenger  overtaking  d’Erlon  about  6.30,  caused  the  1st  Corps 
to  retrace  its  steps,  Napoleon  making  no  effort  to  retain  it 
within  his  sphere  of  operations.1 

Thus  the  1st  Corps  disappeared  from  the  field  of  Ligny 
without  taking  any  part  in  the  action  except  on  the  extreme 
left;  there  Jacquinot’s  light  cavalry  engaged  some  Prussian 
cavalry  who  were  threatening  to  outflank  Girard’s  much- 
harassed  division.  The  chief  effect  of  d’Erlon’s  appearance  was 
to  delay  by  over  an  hour  Napoleon’s  intended  attack  on  the 
Prussian  centre,  and  that  delay  was  to  prove  a  factor  of  the 
utmost  importance.  Meanwhile  the  movements  and  counter¬ 
movements  of  the  Guard  seem  to  have  made  Bliicher  believe  the 
French  were  on  the  point  of  retiring,  and  that  victory  was  in  his 
grasp.  Rallying  his  right  therefore,  which  had  given  back 
before  the  Young  Guard,  he  prepared  for  a  final  stroke.  He 
gathered  together  the  relics  of  Tippelskirch,  whom  Duhesme 

1  Even  if,  as  Iloussaye  (p.  177)  argues,  it  was  too  late  for  a  wide  turning 
movement  on  Bry,  d’Erlon  might  have  been  directed  towards  Wagnel^e  in  support 
of  Vandamme’s  left. 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


677 


1815] 

had  sent  back  behind  Wagnelee,  of  Brause,  whom  Girard’s 
much-enduring  men  had  driven  again  out  of  Hameau  St.  Amand 
and  La  Haye,  and  of  Pirch  II,  from  whom  Lefol  and  Berthezene 
had  recovered  St.  Amand :  to  these  he  added  a  few  battalions 
of  Langen’s,  the  division  of  Steinmetz  which  had  been 
out  of  action  since  5  o’clock,  and  finally  Stulpnagel  from 
near  Sombreffe.  But  even  this  last  effort  failed.  Duhesme’s 
battalions  were  too  much  for  it,  and  at  the  same  moment 
Napoleon  launched  the  Old  Guard  at  the  Prussian  centre.  This 
stroke  was  a  brilliant  success.  As  the  Guard  advanced  Gerard’s 
men  made  a  final  and  successful  effort,  driving  the  defenders  of 
Ligny  out  of  the  shattered  village  and  up  the  slopes  in  rear.  In 
vain  Langen  and  Krafft  sought  to  rally  their  men :  Milhaud’s 
cuirassiers  following  close  in  the  wake  of  the  Guard  were  upon 
them.  In  vain  Blticher  hurled  the  Prussian  cavalry  at  the 
advancing  French :  the  infantry  of  the  Guard  beat  off  every 
charge  of  Roder’s  squadrons.  Now  was  the  time  when  a 
reserve  would  have  been  invaluable,  but  even  Thielmann  was 
too  hotly  engaged  on  the  left  to  have  a  man  to  spare.  Only  the 
darkness  and  the  exhaustion  of  the  French  troops  on  whom  the 
brunt  of  the  action  had  fallen,  prevented  Ligny  from  being  a 
victory  such  as  Napoleon  needed  to  ensure  the  success  of  his 
plan  of  campaign.  He  had  a  considerable  intact  reserve  in  the 
shape  of  Lobau’s  corps,  and  with  another  hour  of  daylight  much 
might  have  been  done.  As  it  was,  the  piercing  of  the  Prussian 
centre  ended  the  active  part  of  the  day’s  operations.  The  bulk 
of  the  defenders  of  Ligny  got  away  through  the  darkness  to  Bry, 
where  Pirch  II  and  his  division  made  a  stand  which  enabled 
them  to  rally.  Some  other  battalions  halted  nearer  Sombreffe, 
into  which  village  Stulpnagel’s  division  threw  itself.  Farther  to 
the  Prussian  right  Jtirgass  covered  the  withdrawal  of  Ziethen 
and  Pirch  I  towards  Tilly,  a  movement  conducted  with  remark¬ 
ably  little  difficulty.  On  the  other  wing  Thielmann’s  men  held 
on  unmolested  to  Tongrines  and  Mont  Potriaux  until  3  o’clock 
next  morning.  The  French  spent  the  night  on  the  slopes  to  the 
north  of  Ligny  and  St.  Amand,  which  had  formed  the  position 
of  the  Prussian  main  body  during  the  day.  With  the  field  of 
battle  they  found  themselves  also  in  possession  of  21  guns 
which  the  Prussians  had  failed  to  carry  off ;  but  their  victory 
lacked  completeness,  and  the  fact  that  the  Prussians  contrived 
to  retire  unmolested  after  so  close  and  fierce  an  engagement  is 


678  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


the  best  testimony  to  the  impression,  physical  and  moral,  their 
stubborn  defence,  their  repeated  rallies,  their  constant  efforts  to 
recover  the  lost  villages,  had  made  on  their  victors. 

It  would  be  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  it  was  in  the  twelve 
hours  which  followed  the  close  of  the  battle  of  Ligny  that  the 
Waterloo  campaign  was  decided.  The  French  had  lost  some 
chances  through  delays  ;  but  had  they  promptly  followed  up  the 
success  of  Ligny  as  they  had  followed  up  that  of  Jena,  the 
campaign  would  have  probably  been  a  triumphant  success.  But 
Napoleon  let  his  prey  slip  through  his  grasp,  and  with  the 
unmolested  and  unobserved  retreat  of  the  Prussians  the  best 
chance  of  a  French  victory  slipped  away.  Badly  though  it  had 
been  mauled,  the  Prussian  army  was  still  “  in  being,”  and  quite 
capable  of  playing  its  part  in  the  further  developments  of  the 
campaign.  Directly  the  troops  had  been  got  into  order  again, 
Gneisenau  gave  directions  for  a  further  retreat,  though  not  to¬ 
wards  Liege  and  Namur,  the  bases  on  which  it  would  have  been 
natural  for  the  beaten  Prussians  to  retire.  The  direction  given 
was  Northward  towards  Wavre,1  so  that  they  might  not  lose 
touch  with  Wellington’s  army,  which  the  Prussian  retreat  would 
force  to  withdraw  from  its  position  at  Quatre  Bras,  a  position  it 
had  been  fortunate  enough  to  maintain  against  all  Ney’s  attacks 
throughout  the  16th,  but  which  became  dangerously  exposed  by 
BRicher’s  retreat  from  Ligny.  Only  the  leading  incidents  of 
the  battle  of  Quatre  Bras  need  mention  here.  Ney’s  orders 
from  the  Emperor2  contemplated  the  Marshal  remaining  more 
or  less  inactive  about  Quatre  Bras  till  Napoleon,  having  settled 
with  the  Prussians  opposing  Grouchy  and  the  right,  should 
transfer  himself  with  his  reserve  to  the  left  and  begin  the 
advance  on  Brussels.  Partly  therefore,  lest  a  premature  advance 
on  his  part  should  dislocate  Napoleon’s  plans,  and  partly  because 
the  brave  show  made  by  Perponcher  with  his  Nassauers  and 
Dutch-Belgians  imposed  upon  him,  Ney  did  not  attack  the  force 
in  front  of  him  till  nearly  2  p.m.  The  French  had  then  just 
driven  Perponcher’s  men  back  into  the  wood  of  Bossu,  and  were 
on  the  point  of  seizing  Quatre  Bras  when  the  arrival  of  Picton 
with  the  British  brigades  of  Kempt  and  Pack,  and  the  Hanover¬ 
ians  of  Best  saved  the  situation  (2.40  p.m.).  Next,  part  of  the 

1  The  part  Gneisenau  played  on  the  morning  of  the  18th  must  not  be  allowed  to 
diminish  the  credit  due  to  him  for  this  courageous  and  important  resolve. 

2  Cf.  Siborne,  pp.  136-138. 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


679 


1815] 

Brunswick  corps  arrived  and  took  up  their  ground  between 
Picton’s  right,  East  of  the  Charleroi-Nivelles  road,  and  the  wood 
of  Bossu.  Seeing  the  French  infantry  advancing  in  column, 
Wellington  met  them  in  the  old  Peninsula  style  with  an  advance 
of  Picton’s  division  in  line,  with  the  result  that  the  French 
columns  were  driven  back  in  much  confusion.  However,  the 
French  cavalry  now  advanced  to  the  attack,  and  though  their 
charge  failed  to  shake  the  Peninsula  veterans  of  Picton’s  division, 
it  broke  through  the  raw  Brunswick  levies,  who  fled  headlong  to 
the  rear,  cavalry  and  infantry  involved  in  the  same  confusion. 
In  the  effort  to  rally  his  men  Duke  Frederick  William  was 
mortally  wounded,  and  only  the  stubborn  defence  of  Picton’s 
squares  repelled  the  French  attack.  It  was  renewed  almost  at 
once  by  Kellermann,  who  had  just  arrived  with  a  division  ol 
cuirassiers.  Again  the  British  infantry  beat  off  the  charges  ;  and 
though  one  of  Best’s  Hanoverian  Landwehr  battalions  was 
caught  by  a  body  of  lancers  and  ridden  down  before  it  could 
form  square,  the  rest  of  the  brigade  stood  their  ground.  About 
five  o’clock  Alten’s  division  came  up  to  the  assistance  of  Picton, 
the  Brunswickers  rallied  on  the  arrival  of  two  belated  battalions 
of  their  corps,  and  after  another  onset  by  the  French  cavalry 
had  been  beaten  back,  Kielmansegge’s  Hanoverians  of  Alten’s 
division  behaving  no  less  steadily  than  did  Picton’s  veterans,  the 
British  Guards  came  up  and  secured  Wellington’s  right  by 
recovering  the  wood  of  Bossu,  from  which  the  Dutch-Belgians 
had  been  driven.  This  enabled  Wellington  to  order  a  general 
advance  before  which  Ney  gave  way,  retiring  to  the  heights  in 
front  of  Frasnes  where  d’Erlon  joined  him  about  9  o’clock. 

The  nature  of  the  struggle  at  Quatre  Bras  may  be  best  under¬ 
stood  from  the  respective  losses  of  the  units  engaged  on  the 
Allied  side.  The  British  had  some  2300  casualties  out  of  rather 
over  11,000  engaged,  Picton’s  two  brigades  losing  between  them 
30  per  cent,  of  their  numbers.  The  Brunswick  corps  also  lost 
heavily,  its  800  casualties  representing  about  a  seventh  of  its 
strength,  and  the  Hanoverians  with  under  400  casualties  among 
the  5700  present  got  off  comparatively  lightly.  In  Perponcher’s 
division  there  were  some  1000  killed,  wounded  and  missing  out  of 
7500,  but  the  comparatively  high  proportion  of  the  latter  dimin¬ 
ishes  the  merits  of  their  performance.  The  French,  whose 
numbers  at  the  end  of  the  fight  were  considerably  inferior  to 
those  opposed  to  them,  confessed  to  over  4000  casualties  among 


68o  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


21,000  engaged  :  at  the  same  time  it  should  be  remembered  that 
the  Allied  force  did  not  outnumber  Ney’s  until  Alten  arrived, 
and  that  even  then  about  a  third  of  Wellington’s  26,000  consisted 
of  Dutch-Belgians  on  whom  but  little  reliance  could  be  placed. 
Foy’s  admission  that  “  conceal  it  as  we  may,  Quatre  Bras  was  a 
defeat  for  us,”  is  no  more  than  the  truth.  Ney’s  attacks  had 
been  repulsed  with  loss,  and  as  the  arrival  during  the  night  of 
the  greater  part  of  the  British  cavalry  supplied  the  deficiency  in 
that  arm  which  had  so  hampered  Wellington  during  the  day, 
there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  if  the  Marshal  had  done  what 
some  of  his  critics  would  have  had  him  do  and  renewed  his 
attack  early  on  the  17th,  he  would  have  been  much  more  fortu¬ 
nate  than  on  the  16th.  But  for  the  delay  in  attacking  on  the 
17th  it  is  hardly  Ney  who  should  be  held  responsible. 

Knowing  what  force  he  had  before  him,  and  anxious  to  do 
nothing  which  should  in  any  way  compromise  the  Emperor’s 
movements,  Ney  forbore  from  any  movement  on  his  own  initia¬ 
tive,  waiting  for  orders.  Not  till  midday  did  Napoleon  send  off 
a  messenger  to  Ney,  bidding  him  attack  the  English  at  once  and 
adding  that  he  was  himself  on  his  way  to  Quatre  Bras  to  assist 
him.  But  by  this  time  even  the  English  cavalry  who  formed 
the  rearguard  were  quitting  the  position. 

Wellington  had  been  left  without  any  news  from  his  Prussian 
allies,  as  the  only  messenger  Gneisenau  sent  him  was  inter¬ 
cepted  by  the  French.  Plence  the  delay  of  the  Allied  forces 
in  their  somewhat  exposed  position.  However,  the  inaction  of 
Napoleon  averted  the  peril  thus  risked.  The  Emperor’s  conduct 
on  the  morning  of  June  17th  has  been  criticised  and  explained 
times  without  number.  His  neglect  to  move  at  once  to  Quatre 
Bras  directly  he  received,  at  7.30  a.m.,  Ney’s  account  of  the 
previous  day’s  operations  was  an  error  far  less  serious  than  the 
failure  to  keep  touch  with  the  Prussians,  or  to  discover  the  true 
direction  of  their  retreat.  Very  early  on  the  17th  Wellington 
had  patrols  out,  and  was  thoroughly  on  the  alert.  From  one  of 
these  patrols,  which  had  pushed  as  far  as  Tilly  and  communicated 
with  Ziethen’s  rearguard,  he  heard  about  7.30  that  the  Prussians 
were  retiring  on  Wawre,  so  that  directly  the  French  showed 
signs  of  being  about  to  attack  he  could  have  set  his  troops 
in  motion  rearward.  As  it  was,  the  infantry  moved  off  about 
10  a.m.  and  reached  the  position  of  Mont  St.  Jean,  where 
Wellington  had  decided  to  make  his  stand  if  only  one  corps  of 


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THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


68l 

the  Prussian  army  would  join  him,  without  being  in  the  least 
pressed.  Similarly  Lord  Uxbridge  and  the  cavalry  who  covered 
the  retreat,  though  closely  pursued  by  Napoleon,  had  little 
difficulty  in  performing  their  task  without  much  loss,  a  sharp 
skirmish  at  Genappe,  in  which  the  French  lancers  repulsed  the 
7th  Hussars  but  were  routed  by  the  much  heavier  Life  Guards, 
being  the  only  important  incident  of  the  retreat. 

Thus  the  evening  of  the  17th  found  Wellington  with  the  bulk 
of  his  forces,  67,600  men  with  150  guns,1  along  the  ridge  which 
runs  from  the  chateau  of  Hougoumont  past  the  farm  of  La 
Haye  Sainte  towards  Ohain ;  one  Anglo-Hanoverian  division  2 
and  some  10,000  Dutch-Belgians  being  posted  at  Hal  to  protect 
the  Duke’s  communications  with  the  sea  and,  in  case  of  need, 
assist  to  cover  a  retreat  to  the  North-Westward.  Napoleon 
with  the  Guard  and  the  cavalry  of  Milhaud,  Kellermann,  Domon 
and  Subervie,  and  the  corps  of  d’Erlon,  Reille  and  Lobau,  in  all 
some  74,000  men  with  240  guns,  lay  opposite  to  him.  At  the 
same  time  Grouchy  with  the  33,000  men  entrusted  to  him  for 
the  purpose  of  pursuing  the  Prussians  and  completing  their 
defeat  3  had  not  got  beyond  Gembloux.  This  is  not  the  place 
for  an  adequate  discussion  of  Grouchy’s  proceedings  and  of  his 
share  of  the  responsibility  for  the  results  of  the  campaign.  That 
he  showed  a  lack  of  energy  and  initiative  is  not  to  be  denied, 
even  by  those  who  regard  the  master  rather  than  the  subordinate 
as  mainly  to  blame  for  the  disaster  which  befell  the  French. 
Grouchy’s  orders  certainly  contemplated  a  pursuit  of  the  Prus¬ 
sians  away  from  the  English,  though  they  admitted  the  possibility 
that  the  Allies  might  seek  to  reunite  to  cover  Brussels.  There 
was  nothing  in  his  instructions  about  rejoining  the  Emperor  to 
fight  a  battle  against  Wellington  ;  and  even  the  orders  sent  off 
by  Napoleon  at  10  a.m.  on  the  1  Sth,  which  speak  of  co-ordinat¬ 
ing  the  movements  of  the  detached  force  with  those  of  the  main 
body,  direct  the  Marshal  to  continue  his  move  on  Wavre.  Such 
information  as  Napoleon  had  at  ir  p.m.  on  the  17th  coincided 
with  his  own  belief,  a  belief  to  which  perhaps  the  wish  was 
father,  that  the  Prussians  were  retiring  towards  the  Meuse.  Pajol 

1  Of  these  24,000  were  British,  15,000  being  infantry,  6000  cavalry  and  3000 
artillery ;  the  King’s  German  Legion  had  2000  cavalry,  500  gunners  and  3300 
infantry  :  of  Hanoverians  there  were  about  11,000,  1000  being  cavalry  and  artillery, 
the  Brunswick  contingent  was  a  little  under  6000,  the  Nassauers  of  Kruse  and  Prince 
Bernhard  were  somewhat  stronger,  and  the  rest,  nearly  14,000,  were  Dutch-Belgians. 

3  Colville’s.  3  Cf.  Iloussaye,  p.  225. 


682  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


had  sent  in  word  that  his  light  cavalry  had  found  guns,  waggons 
and  stragglers  on  the  road  to  Namur,  and  the  French  vedettes 
near  Tilly  and  Gentinnes  had  failed  to  notice  or  to  announce  the 
retreat  of  the  Prussians  from  those  villages  or  the  direction 
which  it  had  taken.  The  true  causes  of  Grouchy’s  failure  to 
prevent  the  Prussians  from  coming  to  the  aid  of  their  allies  at 
Waterloo  were  firstly,  Napoleon’s  assumption,  warranted  perhaps 
by  the  general  principles  of  strategy  but  partially  based  on  a  false 
estimate  of  the  success  he  had  gained  on  the  previous  day,1 
that  Namur  or  Maastricht  would  prove  to  be  the  point  on  which 
the  beaten  Prussians  had  fallen  back,  and  secondly,  the  Emperor’s 
extraordinary  inactivity  on  the  morning  of  the  17th.  The  touch 
which  was  then  lost  with  Bliicher’s  retreating  forces,  the  hours 
that  were  then  wasted,  contributed  far  more  to  bring  about  the 
defeat  of  Waterloo  than  Grouchy’s  resolve  to  continue  his  march 
from  Sart  a  Walhain  to  Wavre  instead  of  striking  to  his  left 
across  the  Dyle  towards  Planchenoit  and  the  sound  of  the  guns. 
And  even  had  Grouchy  resolved  to  depart  from  his  orders  and 
make  a  move  for  which  he  had  no  authority,  it  is  still  most  un¬ 
likely  that  any  appreciable  fraction  of  his  corps  could  have 
arrived  on  the  battlefield  in  time.  The  physical  difficulties 
which  retarded  Biilow  and  Ziethen  would  have  been  no  less 
potent  to  delay  the  French.  The  passage  of  the  Dyle  would 
have  been  no  simple  or  rapid  operation  when  33,000  men  with 
11 6  guns  had  only  a  wooden  bridge  at  Moustier  and  a  stone 
bridge  at  Ottignies  by  which  to  cross.  In  short,  as  Mr.  Hereford 
George  has  remarked  in  his  just  and  trenchant  criticism  of  Judge 
O’Connor  Morris’  Campaign  of  /Sip,2  “it  is  only  upon  the  map, 
not  on  the  real  ground,  that  Grouchy  could  have  saved  Napoleon 
from  defeat.” 

Meanwhile  the  Prussian  army  had  managed  to  get  away 
unhindered  and  almost  unobserved  from  the  dangerous  position 
in  which  the  timely  advent  of  night  had  found  it  on  June  16th. 
Under  cover  of  the  friendly  darkness  the  Prussians  had  rallied 
in  a  manner  which  speaks  volumes  for  their  discipline  and  for 
the  spirit  by  which  they  were  animated.  Despite  the  fact  that 
their  losses  in  killed,  wounded  and  prisoners  amounted  to  nearly 
1 2, 000, 3  and  that  many  members  of  the  contingents  drawn 
from  the  Rhenish  and  Westphalian  provinces  lately  annexed  to 
Prussia  had  hastened  to  disassociate  themselves  from  a  cause 
1  Cf.  Houssaye,  p.  315.  2  Cf.  E.II.R.  1900 ,  p.  816. 


3  Houssaye,  p.  184. 


1815] 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


683 


for  which  they  had  no  zeal  by  a  headlong  flight  towards  Aix-la- 
Chapelle  and  Liege,  the  bulk  of  the  army  rallied  directly  the 
action  ceased.  There  seems  to  have  been  great  disorder  in  the 
centre  and  considerable  confusion  on  the  left,  but  the  troops 
of  Ziethen  and  Pirch  I  withdrew  in  very  fair  order1  and  a  rear¬ 
guard  of  the  1st  Corps  held  Bry  till  daybreak,  Sombreffe 
being  in  like  manner  occupied  by  a  portion  of  Thielmann’s 
corps,  the  bulk  of  which  remained  almost  in  their  battle  positions 
till  3  a.m.  on  the  17th,  when  they  withdrew  to  Gembloux. 

For  the  decision  to  retire  by  Tilly  and  Mont  St.  Guibert  on 
Wavre,  Gneisenau  was  responsible.  Bliicher  had  been  unhorsed 
and  badly  injured  in  the  closing  stages  of  the  battle,  and  did  not 
resume  control  of  the  army’s  operations  until  1 1  a.m.  on  the 
1 8th.  In  thus  retiring  Northward  Gneisenau  did  not  absolutely 
sacrifice  his  communications.  If  he  abandoned  the  lines  of 
retreat  by  Namur  and  Liege,  those  by  Tirlemont  or  Louvain  on 
Maastricht  or  Wesel  were  still  open  to  him,  and  his  action  on  the 
1 8th  makes  it  clear  that  he  had  by  no  means  subordinated  every¬ 
thing  to  the  chance  of  joining  Wellington. 

The  retreat  was  effected  with  very  little  difficulty.  Ziethen 
moving  from  Tilly  by  Mont  St.  Guibert  established  his  troops 
on  the  left  bank  of  the  Dyle  soon  after  midday.  Pirch  I  from 
Gentinnes  after  halting  at  Mont  St.  Guibert  to  cover  Ziethen’s 
passage  of  that  defile,  followed  through  it  in  his  turn  and  bivou¬ 
acked  between  St.  Anne  and  Aisemont  on  the  right  bank  of  the 
river.  Thielmann  after  remaining  stationary  at  Gembloux  from 
6  a.m.  to  2  pan.,  a  piece  of  most  culpable  imprudence,  which 
only  escaped  the  severest  punishment  through  Napoleon’s 
equally  extraordinary  laxity  in  pursuing  the  defeated  Prussians, 
arrived  at  Wavre  late  in  the  evening.  Most  of  his  corps  crossed 
the  Dyle  and  encamped  at  La  Bavette,  but  his  rearguard  re¬ 
mained  on  the  right  bank.  Finally,  Biilow,  whose  troops  had 
advanced  no  farther  than  Baudeset  on  the  evening  of  the  16th, 
where  his  orders  found  him  about  9.30  a.m.  next  day,  arrived  at 
Dion  le  Mont  after  a  somewhat  leisurely  march  by  Walhain  and 
Corroy.  Detachments  under  Colonels  Lebedur  and  Sohr  were 
left  to  cover  the  main  army  and  to  keep  a  lookout  for  the 
advance  of  the  French,  and  patrols  were  thrust  out  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Dyle  to  collect  intelligence  of  Wellington’s  army 
and  their  opponents. 


1  Houssaye,  p.  iSt . 


684  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


It  was  not  long  after  his  arrival  at  Wavre  that  Blticher 
received  Wellington’s  message,  sent  off  at  9.30  a.m.,  in  which 
the  Duke  announced  that  if  he  could  be  secure  of  the  assistance 
of,  at  any  rate,  one  Prussian  corps  he  would  give  battle  in  front  of 
Waterloo  on  the  following  morning.  This  assurance  Bliicher 
was  in  a  position  to  send  him  ;  for,  very  fortunately,  the  Prussian 
reserve  ammunition  park  had  arrived  safely  at  Wavre  in  the 
course  of  the  afternoon,  and  the  corps  of  Pirch  and  Ziethen  were 
thus  able  to  replenish  their  exhausted  pouches  and  limbers,  and 
so  to  put  themselves  in  a  fit  condition  for  another  action. 

The  facility  with  which  the  retreat  of  the  Prussians  had  been 
accomplished  had  been  partly  due  to  the  negligence  of  the 
French  outposts  near  Tilly  and  Gentinnes ;  partly  to  the  fact 
that  Pajol’s  cavalry,  thrust  out  to  their  right  to  seek  for  the 
retreating  enemy,  had  found  enough  traces  of  fugitives  to  make 
them  believe  the  line  chosen  was  that  towards  Namur  and  Liege  ; 
partly  to  Berton’s  cavalry  failing  to  send  full  information  back 
to  headquarters,  when,  pushing  out  to  Gembloux  about  9  a.m.  they 
found  that  village  still  occupied  in  force  by  Thielmann,  and  again 
neglecting  to  observe  the  Prussians  closely  when  they  did  retire. 
Nightfall  found  Grouchy  at  Gembloux  under  the  impression  that 
though  a  portion  of  the  Prussians  might  be  making  for  Wavre 
with  the  idea  of  joining  Wellington,  part  were  certainly  retiring 
Eastward  to  Namur  while  the  bulk  of  their  army  was  on  its 
way  to  Liege  through  Perwez. 

It  was  not,  however,  by  this  impression  that  his  proceedings 
on  the  next  morning  were  governed.  His  letter  to  Napoleon, 
written  at  6  a.m.,  regards  the  Prussians  as  concentrating  at 
Wavre  in  order  to  fall  back  on  Brussels  ;  but  he  omitted  to  con¬ 
sider  that  they  might  as  easily  move  to  their  flank  towards  Ohain 
as  to  their  rear  towards  Brussels.  The  only  way  to  make  certain 
of  their  movements  was  to  close  with  them  as  early  as  possible, 
and  Grouchy’s  delay  on  the  morning  of  the  1 8th  was  a  most 
serious  error  for  which  he  cannot  evade  the  responsibility.  Not 
till  after  7  a.m.  did  Vandamme’s  corps  set  out,  and  Gerard  was 
two  hours  later  in  starting.  Thus  Grouchy  had  not  got  beyond 
Walhain  when,  a  little  before  midday,  the  distant  sound  of 
cannon  became  audible.  A  sharp  discussion  between  Grouchy 
and  Gerard  resulted  in  the  Marshal  deciding  to  continue  his 
move  on  Wavre  and  rejecting  his  lieutenant’s  appeal  to  him  to 
march  towards  the  sound  of  the  guns.  He  had  just  heard  from 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


685 


1815] 

his  cavalry  that  they  had  fallen  in  with  the  Prussian  rearguard 
near  Wavre,  and  before  he  left  Walhain  he  received  the  despatch 
sent  off  by  Napoleon  at  10  o’clock  bidding  him  move  on  Wavre. 

Between  9  and  10  a.m.  (June  1 8th)  Excelmans’  cavalry  had 
reached  the  wood  of  La  Huzelle  and  sighted  Prussian  troops 
on  the  heights  between  them  and  Wavre.  However,  Excelmans 
made  no  effort  to  engage,  but  withdrew  his  main  body  to 
Corbais.  This  allowed  Ledebur  and  the  detachment  left  at 
Mont  St.  Guibert,  whose  retreat  was  in  danger  of  being  cut  off, 
to  force  their  way  through  the  French  outposts  and  take  up  a 
position  at  the  Southern  end  of  the  defile  made  by  the  road 
from  Gembloux  to  Wavre  in  passing  the  wood  of  La  Huzelle. 
To  force  this  defile  the  French  had  to  wait  for  Vandamme’s 
infantry.  These  did  not  appear  till  after  3  p.m.,  and  it  was 
already  near  4  o’clock  when  the  French  having  pushed  through 
the  wood,  from  which  Ledebur  had  withdrawn,  prepared  to 
attack  Wavre.  By  this  time  the  rearguard  of  the  Ilnd  Corps 
had  already  crossed  the  Dyle  by  the  bridge  of  Bierge,  which 
they  destroyed  behind  them.  Indeed,  the  whole  Prussian  army 
was  in  motion  towards  Waterloo,  a -few  detachments  excepted. 
The  appearance  of  the  French  forced  Thielmann  to  retrace  his 
steps,  and  in  obedience  to  Bliicher’s  orders  the  Illrd  Corps  took 
up  a  position  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Dyle  to  dispute  the 
passage  of  the  river  and  thereby  cover  the  movement  of  the 
rest  of  the  army  towards  Waterloo  from  any  interruption — a 
task  which  it  performed  with  complete  success  despite  the 
superior  numbers  Grouchy  was  able  to  bring  against  it. 

The  movement  which  it  was  Thielmann’s  task  to  cover  was 
that  to  which  Bliicher  had  pledged  himself  on  the  previous 
evening,  and  on  which  Wellington  was  relying,  when,  with  an 
army  somewhat  inferior  in  numbers  and  certainly  very  inferior 
in  average  quality,  he  faced  Napoleon  at  Waterloo.  It  cannot 
be  said  that  the  move  was  executed  with  as  much  promptitude 
or  skilful  management  as  is  usually  represented.  As  it  was 
all-important  that  the  Prussian  reinforcements  should  be  at 
Wellington’s  disposal  as  early  in  the  day  as  possible,  one  would 
naturally  have  expected  that  the  corps  detailed  to  lead  the  way 
would  have  been  one  of  the  two  which  had  bivouacked  on  the 
nearer  side  of  the  Dyle.  But  instead  of  choosing  Thielmann, 
who  at  La  Bavette  was  only  six  miles  from  St.  Lambert,  the 
point  on  which  Biilow  was  in  the  first  instance  directed,  or 


686  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


Ziethen,  who  at  Bierge  was  about  half  a  mile  nearer,  the 
Prussian  commander — or  more  probably  his  Chief  of  Staff, 
Gneisenau — selected  Billow’s  corps,  which  not  only  had  nearly 
nine  miles  to  cover,  but  had  to  pass  through  Wavre  on  the  way, 
in  doing  which  it  was  considerably  delayed  by  a  fire  in  the 
main  street.  Biilow’s  corps  had,  of  course,  not  been  engaged  on 
the  1 6th,  and  it  was  natural  to  select  it  rather  than  the  shaken 
corps  of  Ziethen  and  Pirch  ;  but  Thielmann  had  not  suffered  at  all 
heavily  at  Ligny,  and  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why  his  corps 
should  not  have  headed  the  movement.  From  La  Bavette  to 
Ohain  is  barely  seven  miles,  and  if  Thielmann  had  set  out  at 
8  o’clock  his  corps  ought  to  have  been  at  Ohain  well  before 
midday.  Biilow  and  Pirch  could  have  covered  the  move  of 
Thielmann  and  Ziethen  quite  as  effectively  as  the  1st  and 
1 1  Ird  Corps  covered  the  advance  of  the  Ilnd  and  I  Vth ;  while 
if  Pirch,  who  was  ordered  to  follow  Biilow,  had  only  been  allowed 
to  precede  him,  the  Ilnd  Corps,  having  more  than  two  miles 
less  to  cover,  might  have  been  at  St.  Lambert  soon  after  10 
o’clock.  As  things  were  managed,  Biilow’s  vanguard  was  at  St. 
Lambert  about  1 1 ;  but  the  bulk  of  the  corps  was  much  later,  and 
the  rearguard  did  not  arrive  there  till  nearly  3  p.m.  Pirch’s  men 
were  under  arms  from  7  a.m.  until  midday,  when  at  last  they  left 
their  bivouacs  at  Aisemont ;  at  2  o’clock  half  the  corps  had  not 
yet  crossed  the  Dyle.  Similarly,  Ziethen’s  men  only  began 
their  march  towards  Ohain  about  midday ;  and  the  fact  that  the 
arrangements  which  directed  Ziethen  on  Smohain  and  Pirch  on 
St.  Lambert  involved  additional  delay  through  these  corps  cross¬ 
ing  each  other’s  path,  has  been  justly  but  severely  criticised  by 
Clausewitz.1  More  than  this,  Biilow’s  advance-guard  halted 
directly  it  had  crossed  the  defile  of  the  Lasne,  and  remained  in¬ 
active  in  the  Wood  of  Paris  for  some  hours.  And  yet  there  are 
those  who  represent  the  late  arrival  of  the  Prussians  at  Waterloo 
as  due  merely  to  the  bad  roads  over  which  they  had  to  move. 
Undoubtedly  the  roads  were  bad,  and  the  passage  of  the  defile 
of  the  Lasne  was  a  matter  of  great  difficulty,  especially  for  the 
guns,  and  was  partly  responsible  for  the  delay,  but  the  physical 
difficulties  do  not  adequately  explain  the  fact  that  it  was  after 
4  o’clock  before  a  shot  was  fired  by  any  of  the  Prussian  army, 
when  at  daybreak  the  most  distant  portion  of  it,  Biilow’s  corps 
at  Dion  le  Mont,  was  less  than  thirteen  miles  from  Mont  St.  Jean. 

1  Der  Feldzug  von  fS/g,  p.  no. 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


687 


1815] 

Gneisenau’s  notorious  distrust  of  Wellington  must  be  taken  into 
account  in  dealing  with  the  Prussian  movements  on  June  18th. 
He  seems  to  have  feared  that  the  British  general  would  retire 
without  fighting,  and  thereby  expose  to  the  joint  attacks  of 
Napoleon  and  Grouchy  the  Prussian  detachments  which  were 
on  their  way  towards  Waterloo.  Moreover,  injured  and  shaken 
as  Bliicher  was,  it  seems  only  reasonable  to  ascribe  to  Gneisenau 
more  responsibility  for  the  arrangements  of  the  Prussian  move¬ 
ment  than  would  otherwise  have  been  the  case.  The  interven¬ 
tion  of  the  Prussians  was,  of  course,  the  decisive  factor  in  the 
day’s  fighting ;  but  it  was  in  no  sense  an  accident  due  merely  to 
Grouchy’s  negligence :  their  co-operation  was  an  essential  feature 
in  the  scheme  on  which  the  battle  was  fought ;  it  was  as  much 
part  of  Wellington’s  calculations  as  were  the  movements  of  his 
own  divisions ;  the  Prussians  were  behind  their  time  and  so 
endangered  his  left,  which  was  his  weak  spot.1  Indeed  it  seems 
certain  that  the  Duke  looked  for  the  arrival  of  the  Prussians  at 
quite  an  early  hour ;  that  he  must  have  almost  expected  the 
corps  for  which  he  had  asked  to  be  up  in  its  place  on  the  left 
of  his  line  before  the  French  attack  began.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  if  Wellington  had  not  received  a  definite  promise  of 
assistance  he  would  never  have  given  battle  at  Waterloo.  The 
delay,  of  course,  added  to  the  dramatic  effect  of  the  intervention. 
Wellington’s  coolness,  steadfastness  and  tactical  skill,  and  the 
courage  and  endurance  of  his  troops  had  been  taxed  to  a  very 
high  degree  before  at  last  the  pressure  of  Biilow  upon  the  FYench 
right  and  the  arrival  of  Ziethen  at  Ohain  afforded  the  long- 
desired  succour  ;  but  had  the  Prussian  Staff  work  in  managing 
their  movement  been  better  done,  or  had  Gneisenau  had  a  little 
more  of  that  confidence  in  his  colleague  which  induced  Wellington 
to  risk  being  defeated  by  Napoleon  before  his  tardy  allies 
appeared,  the  resisting  powers  of  the  Allied  army  would  never 
have  been  exposed  to  so  great  a  strain. 

Numerous  as  are  the  criticisms  which  have  been  urged 
against  the  strategy  of  Wellington  in  the  Waterloo  campaign, 
little  fault  has  been  found  with  his  tactics  in  the  great  contest 
which  raged  between  Hougoumont  and  Papelotte  on  that 
momentous  Sunday  from  before  midday  till  after  8  o’clock.  The 
failure  to  adequately  support  Major  Baring  and  the  2nd  Light 
Battalion  of  the  German  Legion,  who  maintained  so  splendid  a 

1  Cf.  Sir  Harry  Smith’s  Memoirs ,  p.  276. 


688  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


defence  of  La  Haye  Sainte  till  after  6  o’clock,  is  the  only  serious 
blot  in  the  Duke’s  management  of  the  battle.  His  admirable 
dispositions  enabled  him  to  utilise  to  the  full  the  advantages  of 
the  ground  to  cover  his  men  from  the  French  cannonade,  his 
employment  of  his  reserves  was  judicious  and  timely.  He  was 
nobly  seconded  by  his  subordinates  and  by  the  troops  under 
his  command.  It  may  perhaps  not  be  out  of  place  to  say  some¬ 
thing  of  the  individual  parts  played  in  the  battle  by  the  various 
German  contingents.  First  and  foremost  among  them  the 
King’s  German  Legion  deserves  mention.  Waterloo  is  perhaps 
the  brightest  page  in  its  history.  The  five  cavalry  regiments 
charged  again  and  again,  and  the  two  infantry  brigades  behaved 
with  a  steadiness  none  could  surpass.  Of  these  two  Ompteda’s 
brigade  was  posted  on  the  right  of  the  high  road  from  Charleroi 
to  Nivelles,  having  Kielmansegge’s  Hanoverians  on  their  right 
and  Picton’s  division  on  their  left  on  the  other  side  of  the  road. 
It  was  to  this  brigade  that  Baring’s  battalion  belonged,  as  did 
also  the  two  unfortunate  battalions,  the  5th  and  8th  Line,  which 
having  at  separate  times  been  rashly  deployed  by  the  express 
orders  of  the  Prince  of  Orange  to  drive  off  the  French 
skirmishers,  were  caught  by  the  French  cavalry  and  practically 
destroyed.1  The  other  brigade,  Duplat’s,  which  belonged  to 
Clinton’s  division,  was  in  reserve  behind  the  right  wing  at  the 
beginning  of  the  action,  but  was  moved  up  into  the  front  line 
about  5  o’clock  during  the  attacks  of  the  French  cavalry,  and 
took  post  to  the  East  of  Hougoumont.  Portions  of  it  also 
shared  in  the  defence  of  Hougoumont.  Of  the  four  Hanoverian 
brigades  present  in  the  action,  those  of  Vincke  and  Best  were 
posted  on  the  extreme  left  of  the  line,  beyond  Picton’s  British 
brigades,  that  of  Kielmansegge  was  in  the  right  centre  between 
Ompteda  and  Colin  Halkett’s  British  brigade,  that  of  William 
Halkett  was  in  reserve  till  nearly  6  o’clock,  when  it  moved  forward 
on  the  right,  two  battalions  supporting  Duplat,  the  other  two 
taking  post  on  the  Nivelles  road  to  prevent  any  turning  move¬ 
ment  by  Pire’s  light  cavalry.  Of  these  brigades  that  of 
Kielmansegge  unquestionably  underwent  the  severest  ordeal ; 
its  heavy  losses,  over  33  per  cent,  of  its  strength,  testify  to  the 
strain  put  upon  it.  The  solitary  Hanoverian  cavalry  regiment 
present,  the  Cumberland  Hussars,  hardly  came  out  of  the  battle 
as  creditably  as  did  its  comrades  of  the  infantry.  On  being 

1  Cf.  Siborne,  pp.  460  and  480. 


i8is] 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


680 


brought  forward  by  Lord  Uxbridge  to  support  the  infantry  of 
the  centre,  the  entire  corps  abandoned  the  not  very  exposed 
position  in  which  the  Earl  had  placed  them,  and,  disregard¬ 
ing  alike  his  orders  and  expostulations,  went  solidly  to  the 
rear  to  spread  panic  and  false  rumours  of  defeat  through 
Brussels. 

The  Brunswickers  behaved  upon  the  whole  in  a  most  credit¬ 
able  fashion :  one  battalion  took  part  in  the  great  struggle  for 
Hougoumont,  and  the  greater  part  of  the  division  was  employed 
on  the  right  to  fill  the  gap  caused  by  Byng’s  Guards  reinforcing 
the  defenders  of  Hougoumont,  in  which  position  they  resisted 
with  great  steadiness  the  charges  of  the  French  cavalry.  About 
7.30,  at  the  time  of  the  last  great  French  attack,  Wellington 
moved  five  battalions  of  the  Brunswickers  more  to  the  centre, 
placing  them  in  the  front  line  between  Kruse’s  Nassauers  and 
Colin  Halkett.  On  coming  under  a  very  heavy  fire  from  the 
advancing  French  the  young  Brunswick  battalions  gave  way 
and  fell  back  in  disorder,  in  which  the  brigades  of  Kruse, 
Kielmansegge  and  Ompteda  became  involved.  This  was  the 
most  critical  moment  in  the  battle,  for  the  Guard  was  then 
ascending  the  slopes  just  to  the  East  of  Hougoumont,  and 
d’Erlon’s  men  were  making  their  final  effort.  By  great  efforts 
Wellington  rallied  the  Brunswickers,  who  re-formed  and  checked 
the  French  just  in  time;  then,  when  Vivian  brought  up  his 
Hussars  in  their  support,  they  moved  forward  again,  the 
Germans  of  Kielmansegge  and  Ompteda  also  rallying  and 
advancing,  so  that  the  Third  Division  once  again  resumed  its 
ground,  sending  the  French  back  down  the  hill.  Kruse’s 
brigade,  whose  loyalty  to  the  Allied  cause  was  by  no  means 
above  suspicion,  since  the  battalions  had  served  in  Spain  under 
the  French  colours,  came  out  of  the  ordeal  well.  When  the 
Brunswickers  gave  way  Kruse’s  men  did  the  same,  and  were 
only  prevented  from  breaking  by  the  10th  Hussars,  who  blocked 
their  way  to  the  rear ;  but  the  Nassauers  rallied  like  the  rest  of 
the  right  centre.  Prince  Bernhard’s  brigade  defended  Pape- 
lotte  with  great  steadiness,  and  the  detachments  of  the  2nd 
Nassau  in  Hougoumont  took  their  full  share  in  the  defence  of 
the  post.  As  to  the  Dutch-Belgians,  Bylandt’s  brigade  had 
some  excuse  for  breaking  when  d’Erlon  charged,  as  they  had 
been  much  exposed  to  the  French  artillery  ;  but  Chasse’s  division 
could  plead  no  such  extenuation  for  the  high  percentage  of 
44 


6g o  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


“missing”  among  their  casualties.1  Trip’s  cavalry  declined  to 
face  the  French,  and  the  small  losses  suffered  by  Ghigny  and 
van  Merlen  show  how  insignificant  was  their  part  in  the  fight. 

The  services  of  the  Prussians  can  hardly  be  explained  with¬ 
out  some  narrative  of  the  leading  features  of  the  action.  It  may 
be  divided  into  six  stages.  The  first  of  these  is  from  the  open¬ 
ing  of  the  cannonade  between  11.30  and  12  to  the  advance  of 
d’  Erlon  just  before  2  p.m.  Of  this  stage  Reille’s  attack  on 
Hougoumont  and  the  cannonade  which  paved  the  way  for 
d’Erlon’s  assaults  were  the  principal  features.  The  second 
stage  is  that  of  the  great  attack  of  d’Erlon’s  corps  on  the  Allied 
left  centre.  This  was  checked  by  Picton’s  infantry  and  con¬ 
verted  into  a  disastrous  repulse  by  the  charge  of  the  Household 
and  “  Union  ”  cavalry  brigades.  Meanwhile  most  of  Reille’s 
corps  had  become  absorbed  in  the  desperate  struggle  for 
Hougoumont.  The  third  stage,  beginning  about  3  o’clock  and 
lasting  till  nearly  6,  is  that  of  the  repeated  attacks  of  the  French 
cavalry  against  the  British  and  German  squares  to  the  West  of 
the  high  road.  These  charges  were  varied  by  a  heavy  cannonade, 
and  by  the  attacks  of  the  numerous  skirmishers  whom  the  French 
thrust  forward.  However,  neither  artillery  nor  cavalry  nor 
skirmishers  succeeded  in  breaking  a  single  square,  for  the  8th 
Line  Battalion  of  the  German  Legion,  which  was  caught  in  open 
order  by  French  cavalry  and  cut  to  pieces,  had  been  foolishly 
deployed  by  the  Prince  of  Orange.  During  this  period  d’Erlon 
more  than  once  renewed  his  attacks  on  the  British  and 
Hanoverians  to  the  East  of  the  high  road,  but  with  no  better 
success  than  before,  while  the  struggles  for  Hougoumont  and 
La  Haye  Sainte  continued  to  rage  with  unabated  fury.  How¬ 
ever,  all  Reille’s  attacks  were  repulsed,  and  Baring  maintained 
his  hold  on  La  Haye  Sainte.  The  fourth  stage  was  marked  by 
the  advance  of  Bachelu’s  division  of  Reille’s  corps  with  a  brigade 
of  Foy’s  of  the  same  corps  between  Hougoumont  and  the  high 
road.  It  seems  to  have  been  then,  about  6  o’clock,  that 
Wellington  brought  up  the  brigades  of  Duplat  and  Adam  to 
aid  his  hard-pressed  right,  and  apparently  it  was  largely  by 
them  that  Bachelu  and  Foy  were  repulsed.2  However,  at  this 

1  The  claim  of  Dittmer’s  brigade  to  have  repulsed  the  Imperial  Guard  is  one 
which,  despite  M.  Houssaye’s  support,  I  cannot  admit  to  be  borne  out  by  the 
evidence;  cf.  Quarterly  Review ,  June  1900,  for  a  criticism  of  M.  Houssaye’s  account. 

2  Cf.  Waterloo  Letters ,  accounts  of  Adam’s  brigade. 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


691 


•815] 

moment  success  finally  rewarded  the  assaults  of  the  French  on  La 
Haye  Sainte,  and  the  importance  of  the  capture  of  the  post  was 
at  once  seen  from  the  vigour  and  success  with  which  the  French 
skirmishers  pressed  forward  against  Allen’s  division  in  the 
right  centre  and  against  Lambert  and  Kempt  to  the  East  of 
the  road.  To  drive  off  the  skirmishers,  the  Prince  of  Orange 
ordered  Ompteda  to  deploy  the  5th  Line  Battalion  of  the  Legion 
into  line  ;  Ompteda,  obeying  against  his  better  judgment,  for  he 
knew  that  French  cavalry  were  close  at  hand,  led  the  battalion 
forward  only  to  have  his  forebodings  verified :  a  regiment  of 
cuirassiers  charged  in  upon  its  right  flank  and  cut  the  un¬ 
fortunate  battalion  to  pieces,  Ompteda  himself  being  among 
those  who  perished.  However,  though  La  Haye  Sainte  was 
lost  Hougoumont  was  still  untaken,  and  the  steadfast  squares 
of  infantry,  reduced  though  some  were  to  mere  handfuls,  kept 
their  ground  unflinchingly.  A  fresh  effort  was  needed  if  the 
French  were  to  win.  Their  cavalry  had  spent  themselves  in  their 
repeated  charges,  all  the  attacks  of  d’Erlon  and  Reille  had  been 
repulsed.  But  there  remained  the  Guard,  and  the  fifth  stage  of 
the  great  battle  came  when,  about  7.30,  this  last  reserve  was  thrown 
into  the  scale.1  As  the  Guard  advanced  the  persevering  infantry 
of  d’Erlon  came  on  again — Allix  and  Marcognet  on  the  East  of 
the  high  road,  Donzelot  to  the  West  of  it  pushing  forward  against 
Alten’s  shattered  division.  This  Wellington  had  just  reinforced 
with  five  battalions  of  Brunswickers  from  the  right.  It  was  at 
this  moment  that  the  Brunswickers  on  coming  under  the  heavy 
fire  of  Donzelot’s  infantry  were  seized  by  the  temporary  panic 

1  According  to  M.  Houssaye  only  five  battalions  of  the  Guard  took  part  in  this 
attack,  though  it  seems  most  doubtful  whether,  as  he  alleges  (p.  369),  the  4th 
Chasseurs  had  lost  so  heavily  at  Ligny  as  to  have  been  reduced  to  one  battalion  (cf. 
Professor  Oman’s  article  in  E.H.R.  1904,  p.  689),  and  one  may  fairly  put  the  force 
engaged  in  this  attack  at  six  battalions  at  least.  All  eight  battalions  of  the  Young 
Guard  and  two  of  the  Old  had  been  diverted  to  Planchenoit  :  one  was  at  Caillou 
guarding  the  military  chest,  two  halted  at  Rossomme  as  a  reserve,  while  four  were 
not  sent  forward  to  the  attack,  but  held  in  reserve  to  be  pushed  forward  “  if  all  went 
well” — Houssaye,  p.  402.  If  this  was  actually  the  case,  it  is  difficult  to  understand 
what  the  Emperor  can  have  expected  to  achieve  by  sending  only  3000  men  against 
a  position  from  which  nearly  double  that  number  ( i.e .  Eoy  and  Bachelu)  had  just 
been  repulsed.  If  the  Guard  were  to  be  put  in  at  all,  every  available  battalion 
should  surely  have  been  utilised.  It  is,  of  course,  possible  that  the  old  version  of 
the  attack  of  the  Guard  in  two  columns  is  after  all  not  so  inaccurate  as  has  been 
represented,  and  that  two  or  three  of  these  apparently  unemployed  battalions  did 
actually  move  forward  in  support  of  their  comrades  only  to  be  caught  in  flank  and 
destroyed  by  the  52nd. 


692  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


which  threatened  to  produce  a  disaster ; 1  but  they  rallied,  and 
aided  by  the  rest  of  the  division  recovered  the  position  they  had 
so  nearly  lost.  To  the  East  of  the  road  Pack  brought  his 
battalions  back  into  the  front  line  on  the  left  of  Kempt  and 
Lambert,2  and  between  them  they  sent  Allix  and  Marcognet 
back  in  disorder  down  the  slopes.  It  was  at  this  moment — 
7.45  p.m. — that  the  cry  went  up  from  the  French  ranks,  “  The 
Guard  recoils  ”  ;  for,  confronted  by  the  brigades  of  Maitland  and 
Colin  Halkett,  caught  in  flank  by  Colborne,  who  wheeled  the 
52nd  up  into  line,  a  masterly  stroke  in  which  he  was  copied  by 
the  rest  of  Adam’s  brigade,  and  with  Duplat’s  Legionaries  and 
William  Halkett’s  Hanoverians  pressing  forward  more  to  the 
right,  the  forlorn  hope  of  the  French  gave  way  and  fell  back  in 
disorder.  And  as  Adam’s  men  with  the  light  cavalry  of  Vivian 
and  Vandeleur  pressed  forward  on  the  heels  of  the  defeated 
Guard,  the  battle  passed  into  its  sixth  and  final  stage,  that  of 
the  counter-attack. 

Long  before  this,  of  course,  the  approach  of  the  Prussians 
had  begun  to  make  itself  felt.3  Indeed,  even  before  d’Erlon’s 
first  and  most  formidable  attack,  while  the  cannonade  was  still 
paving  the  way  for  that  effort,  Napoleon’s  attention  had  been 
called  to  the  presence  of  troops  far  out  on  his  right  flank  in  the 
direction  of  St.  Lambert.  It  was  at  first  supposed  that  these 
might  be  Grouchy’s  men,  but  the  capture  of  a  prisoner  belonging 
to  the  Silesian  Hussars  proved  them  to  be  Biilow’s  vanguard. 
However,  they  did  not  advance,  and  Napoleon  contented  him¬ 
self  with  pushing  out  the  cavalry  of  Domon  and  Subervie  to 
observe  their  movements,  at  the  same  time  instructing  Lobau 
to  support  this  cavalry  screen.  But  for  this  it  is  possible  that 
the  Vlth  Corps  would  have  been  used  to  renew  the  attack  on 
the  left  and  left  centre  which  d’Erlon  had  made  with  such 
little  success.  It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  this  second  attack, 
which  d’Erlon  made  about  3  or  3.30  p.m.4  with  his  own  men 
only,  would  have  had  far  more  chance  of  success  if  the  8000 

1  v.s .  p.  689  ;  cf.  Siborne,  pp.  5 1 5—5 1 7- 

2  After  the  repulse  of  d’Erlon’s  first  attack,  when  Lambert’s  2000  fresh  bayonets 
arrived,  Pack’s  brigade  had  been  withdrawn  to  the  second  line  ;  cf.  Waterloo  Letters. 

3  Unquestionably  the  best  summary  of  the  questions  as  to  the  Prussian  co-opera¬ 
tion  at  Waterloo  is  the  chapter  on  the  subject  in  Dr.  J.  H.  Rose’s  Napoleonic  Studies , 
which  was  published  after  the  first  draft  of  this  chapter  was  written,  but  which  I  have 
consulted  when  revising  my  account  of  the  campaign. 

4  Cf.  Waterloo  Letters ,  pp.  354  and  404. 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


693 


1815] 

bayonets  of  the  Vlth  Corps  had  at  the  same  time  pushed 
forward  by  Papelotte  and  turned  the  left  flank  of  the  Allied 
line.  The  Prussians  remained  inactive,  but  the  menace  of  their 
presence  at  Chapelle  St.  Lambert  was  enough  to  “  contain  ” 
Lobau,  and  d’Erlon’s  attack  failed  completely,  being  beaten  back 
by  the  British  infantry  without  much  difficulty  or  the  inter¬ 
vention  of  the  cavalry.  This  was  the  first  point  at  which  the 
Prussians  in  the  least  influenced  the  battle.  It  is  also  possible 
that  their  presence  at  St.  Lambert  may  have  induced  Napoleon 
to  support  instead  of  suspending  the  cavalry  charges  which  Ney 
began  somewhat  prematurely  about  4  p.m.1 

Bliicher,  who  had  left  Wavre  about  11  o’clock,  seems  to  have 
caught  up  the  bulk  of  Billow’s  corps  about  two  hours  later.  It 
was  then  still  on  the  Eastern  side  of  the  miry  valley  of  the 
Lasne,  the  two  battalions  and  the  cavalry  regiment  which 
formed  the  advance-guard  having  alone  crossed  and  taken 
position  in  the  Wood  of  Paris.2  However,  far  from  at  once 
pushing  forward  to  Wellington’s  assistance,  it  was  not  till  he 
learnt  from  his  scouts  that  there  was  no  prospect  of  any  French 
troops  interfering  with  his  passage  of  the  defile  that  Bliicher  set 
his  men  in  motion  towards  Planchenoit.  By  that  time  it  was 
nearly  2  o’clock.3  Such  were  the  difficulties  of  the  passage, 
particularly  for  the  artillery,  that  the  two  miles  between 
Chapelle  St.  Lambert  and  the  Wood  of  Paris  took  fully  two 
hours  to  cover,  and  only  by  the  greatest  exertions  were  the 
guns  brought  across  the  stream.  Thus  it  was  not  till  half-past 
four  that  Billow’s  two  leading  divisions  at  last  debouched  from 
the  Wood  of  Paris  and  advanced  along  the  road  to  Planchenoit, 
driving  before  them  Domon  and  Subervie.  To  meet  them 
Napoleon  moved  Lobau’s  corps  to  the  right,  and  the  8000 
infantry  of  the  divisions  of  Jannin  and  Simmer  advanced 
against  the  oncoming  Prussians  and  drove  them,  superior  in 
numbers  though  they  were,  back  upon  the  Wood  of  Paris.  But 
Bliicher  had  reserves  at  hand  and  about  5-3°  p.m.  the  two 
remaining  divisions  of  Biilow  advanced  from  the  Wood  of  Paris 
and  joined  in.  Lobau  had  to  recoil  towards  Planchenoit,  against 
which  Bliicher  thrust  forward  Hiller’s  division  with  Ryssel  and 
the  cavalry  of  the  corps  under  Prince  Augustus  William  of 

1  Cf.  Houssaye’s  note,  p.  357. 

2  It  was  these  troops  whom  Napoleon  first  perceived  about  1  or  1.15. 

s  Iloussaye,  p.  366, 


694  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


Prussia  in  support,  while  with  Losthin  and  Hacke  he  assailed 
Lobau  in  front.  Only  one  brigade  of  the  Vlth  Corps  could  be 
spared  for  the  defence  of  Planchenoit,  and  outnumbered  and 
assailed  in  front  and  flank,  it  was  ousted  from  the  village  after 
a  severe  struggle  (6  p.m.).  The  other  three  brigades,  posted 
to  the  North  of  the  Planchenoit-St.  Lambert  road,  kept  the 
Prussians  at  bay,  but  the  capture  of  the  village  at  once  threatened 
Lobau’s  flank  and  the  line  of  retreat  of  the  whole  P'rench  army. 
The  recovery  of  Planchenoit  was  therefore  imperative,  and 
Napoleon  directed  Duhesme  thither  with  the  eight  battalions 
of  the  Young  Guard.  Attacking  with  great  dash  they  thrust 
Hiller’s  division  out  of  Planchenoit.  However,  the  Prussians 
were  at  once  reinforced  and  returned  to  the  attack,  and  Duhesme’s 
men,  though  fighting  most  obstinately,  had  to  give  way  before 
the  superior  numbers  of  their  assailants. 

It  was  then  about  7  o’clock.  Though  sorely  tried  and  much 
reduced  in  numbers  Wellington’s  line  was  still  unbroken,  and 
Napoleon,  having  used  up  all  the  rest  of  his  army  in  his  fruit¬ 
less  efforts  to  drive  the  Allies  from  their  positions,  found  himself 
forced  to  play  his  last  card  and  send  forward  the  veterans  of  the 
Old  and  Middle  Guard  to  see  if  they  would  succeed  where  their 
comrades  of  the  Line  had  failed.  But  at  the  moment  that 
he  was  preparing  to  launch  this  magnificent  reserve  against 
Wellington’s  line,  the  pressure  of  the  Prussians  on  his  right  com¬ 
pelled  him  to  detach  two  battalions  to  Planchenoit  which  Biilow’s 
renewed  assault  had  just  succeeded  in  wresting  from  Duhesme. 

The  intervention  of  the  Old  Guard,  however,  was  more  than 
Biilow’s  men  could  stand.  They  gave  way  before  the  veterans, 
who,  pushing  forward,  retook  the  village.  Encouraged  by 
their  assistance  the  troops  of  Duhesme  and  Lobau  rallied,  and 
once  more  Biilow  was  thrust  back  all  along  the  line.  However, 
the  corps  of  Pirch  I  was  now  beginning  to  arrive  in  Biilow’s 
rear,  and  behind  the  Allied  left  Ziethen  was  at  last  putting  in 
a  belated  appearance.  His  advance-guard,  indeed,  consisting  of 
three  regiments  of  cavalry  and  four  battalions  of  infantry,  had 
arrived  at  Ohain  over  an  hour  before,  but  harassed  by  con¬ 
flicting  orders,1  had  not  pushed  on  until  sent  forward  by 
Ziethen  himself,  a  delay  which,  seeing  how  valuable  every 
man  was  to  Wellington  at  that  moment — he  had  even  called  up 
Chassis  Dutch-Belgians  from  Braine  l’Alleud — might  have 

1  Rose,  Napoleonic  Studies ,  p.  297  ;  but  cf.  Iloussaye,  p.  387. 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


695 


1815] 

proved  most  disastrous.  However,  the  fact  that  Ziethen  was  at 
hand  allowed  Wellington  to  withdraw  from  his  extreme  left 
the  light  cavalry  of  Vandeleur  and  Vivian  and  part  of  Vincke’s 
Hanoverians,  thus  stiffening  his  shattered  right  centre  at  a 
most  critical  juncture.1 

The  final  attack  of  the  Guard,  if  incomparably  the  most 
dramatic  moment  in  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  was  hardly  the 
decisive  point.  Once  Biilow  had  begun  to  seriously  menace  the 
French  retreat,  and  once  Ziethen  had  come  within  reach,  the 
French  had  lost  any  real  chance  of  victory.  It  is  possible  that 
if  all  the  Old  Guard  had  been  put  in  when  Bachelu  and  Foy 
advanced  on  the  West  of  the  high  road  just  after  6  p.m.,  about 
which  time  Duhesme  was  driving  Biilow  from  Planchenoit, 
Napoleon  might  have  utilised  the  chance  given  him  by  the  tardi¬ 
ness  of  the  Prussians,  and  broken  the  English  line  before  their 
allies  could  arrive.  At  7  o’clock  it  would  probably  have  been 
wiser  to  use  the  Guard  to  cover  a  retreat.2  The  Guard,  whatever 
the  number  of  battalions  that  took  part  in  the  attack,  could 
hardly  have  hoped  to  succeed.  Maitland,  Adam,  and  Colin 
Halkett  between  them  must  have  had  3000  bayonets  remaining, 
not  to  mention  Duplat’s  Legionaries  and  William  Halkett’s 
Landwehr.  But  at  the  time  (7.30-8  p.m.)  that  Napoleon  put  into 
the  fray  his  last  reserves,  Ziethen’s  columns  were  debouching  by 
Smohain  and  Papelotte  against  Durutte  on  d’Erlon’s  extreme 
flank,  and  his  men  had  got  into  touch  with  the  flanking  parties 
Biilow  had  thrown  out  towards  Frischermont.  Simultaneously 
Biilow  moved  forward  again,  with  Pirch’s  leading  brigades  to  help 
him.  Tippelskirch  led  the  attack  on  Planchenoit  supported  by 
Hiller  and  Ryssel  :  Billow’s  right  wing,  connected  with  his  left 
by  the  cavalry  of  the  Ilnd  and  IVth  Corps,  moved  forward  against 
Lobau.  Thus  the  advance  of  the  Guard  coincided  with  the  final 
and  most  formidable  attack  of  the  Prussians  on  the  forces  cover¬ 
ing  the  right  flank  of  the  French  array.  Even  had  the  veterans 
broken  Wellington’s  line  the  success  could  hardly  have  been 
followed  up  with  three  Prussian  corps  at  last  at  hand.  However, 
despite  the  vigour  of  the  Prussian  attack,  Lobau  and  Duhesme 
stood  their  ground  with  splendid  tenacity.  The  struggle  for 
Planchenoit  was  especially  desperate,  the  two  battalions  of  the 
Old  Guard  which  had  flung  themselves  into  that  village  held  on 
to  the  churchyard  with  the  greatest  determination,  repelling 

1  Cf.  p.  689,  and  Siborne,  p.  515.  2  Cf. ,  however,  Houssaye,  p.  388. 


696  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


every  frontal  attack  until  at  length  the  Prussians  succeeded  in 
outflanking  the  village.  By  this  time  (8.30  p.m.)  all  was  over. 
The  Guard  had  been  repulsed.  With  Ziethen’s  corps  close  at 
hand  Wellington  had  been  able  to  take  the  risk  of  a  check 
since  reinforcement  was  certain;  and  seeing  the  whole  French 
army  staggering  under  the  blow  of  the  failure  of  the  Guard, 
he  had  at  once  followed  up  his  advantage  by  pushing  forward 
against  its  retreating  masses  Adam’s  infantry  and  the  all 
but  intact  cavalry  brigades  of  Vivian  and  Vandeleur.  These 
troops  had  made  a  vigorous  counter-attack,  forcing  their  way 
into  the  French  centre,  compelling  the  reserves  of  the  Guard  to 
retire,  and  thus  threatening  Reille’s  right  and  d’Erlon’s  left.  But 
these  divisions  also  were  retiring  ;  and  as  the  relics  of  the  Allied 
army  advanced  all  along  the  line,  the  French  fell  into  great  dis¬ 
order.  The  bonds  of  discipline  seemed  to  become  unloosed. 
The  army  degenerated  into  a  rabble.  Ziethen’s  leading  brigade 
began  to  press  heavily  on  Durutte  and  to  drive  his  division  back. 
Its  retreat  uncovered  the  left  flank  and  rear  of  Lobau’s  corps 
which  had  till  then  held  its  ground  against  Biilow.  As  Ziethen’s 
men  fell  on  its  flank  the  Vlth  Corps  gave  way  and  became 
involved  in  the  universal  confusion,  in  which  even  the  last 
reserves  of  the  Old  Guard  were  swallowed  up.  Pelet’s  men, 
recoiling  from  Planchenoit,  with  difficulty  beat  off  the  attacks  of 
the  Prussian  cavalry  who  were  now  crowding  forward  to  take  up 
the  pursuit.  On  the  ridge  which  had  formed  the  main  position 
of  the  French,  Wellington  halted  his  exhausted  men  (8.30  or 
8.45  p.m.).  To  pursue  was  beyond  their  power,  but  the  Prussians 
of  Pirch  and  Ziethen  were  comparatively  fresh,  and  Gneisenau’s 
chase  of  the  beaten  army  was  as  vigorous  and  relentless  as 
Napoleon’s  pursuit  of  the  fugitives  from  Jena  and  Auerstadt. 
Not  till  he  reached  the  heights  of  Frasnes  did  he  desist  from  the 
chase,  and  not  till  they  had  put  the  Sambre  between  them  and 
the  Prussians  did  the  beaten  troops  of  France  rally  to  any 
appreciable  extent. 

The  completeness  of  the  overthrow  of  the  French  at  Waterloo 
is  to  be  in  part  ascribed  to  the  very  lateness  of  the  Prussians  in 
arriving,  which  has  given  rise  to  the  impression,  in  Germany  and 
elsewhere,  that  their  arrival  “  saved  the  English  army  from 
destruction.”  In  a  sense,  of  course,  this  statement  is  true,  but  it 
is  so  partial  and  one-sided  a  version  of  the  truth  as  to  be  rela¬ 
tively  false.  If  Wellington’s  command  was  in  danger  of  destruc- 


Map  to  illustrate  THE  CAMPAIGN  OF  WATERLOO  June  15^- 18^1815 


^ Waterloo 
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THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


697 


1815] 

tion,  that  was  mainly  due  to  the  lateness  of  the  Prussians  in 
appearing,  a  lateness  which  has  already  been  shown  to  have  been 
anything  but  unavoidable.  That  Wellington  would  have  been 
defeated  had  he  given  battle  to  Napoleon  and  his  74,000  men 
with  only  his  own  motley  host  and  altogether  unaided  by  the 
Prussians,  is  no  more  to  be  denied  than  it  is  to  be  supposed  that 
Wellington  would  ever  have  given  battle  at  Waterloo  if  he  had 
not  expected  Prussian  co-operation,  and  that  at  an  earlier  hour 
than  it  actually  arrived.  If  when  the  Prussians  intervened  their 
allies  were  nearly  at  the  end  of  their  tether,  the  fact  is  hardly  as 
creditable  to  the  late-comers  as  it  is  to  the  troops  whose  endur¬ 
ance  had  been  so  sorely  tried  and  had  stood  the  test  so  well.  No 
doubt  the  delay  of  the  Prussians  encouraged  Napoleon  to  go  on 
attempting  to  defeat  Wellington  before  his  allies  could  arrive, 
when  the  more  prudent  course  would  have  been  to  have  disen¬ 
gaged  his  army  and  withdrawn.  Had  a  Prussian  corps  arrived 
at  Ohain  between  12  and  1,  when  Wellington  seems  to  have 
expected  them  to  appear,1  it  would  have  been  fairly  easy  for 
Napoleon  to  draw  off  with  his  forces  practically  intact,  and  the 
indifferent  manoeuvring  capacities  of  the  Allied  army  would  have 
made  a  counter-attack  on  intact  troops  very  risky.  By  7  o’clock 
both  French  and  Allies  had  got  very  near  the  limits  of  their 
powers  of  endurance,  and  consequently  the  intervention  of  the 
Prussians  was  proportionately  more  decisive. 

The  losses  of  the  combatants  are  most  instructive.  The 
British  had  over  7000  casualties,  roughly  30  per  cent,  of  their 
total  strength.  The  King’s  German  Legion  suffered  almost  as 
heavily,  having  1600  casualties  among  under  6000  men.  The 
Brunswickers,  Hanoverians  and  Kruse’s  Nassauers  lost  respect¬ 
ively  1 1, 14,  and  22  percent.  The  Dutch-Belgians  had  4000  casual¬ 
ties  among  about  18,000  men,2  but  of  these  4000  nearly  a  third 
were  “missing.”  The  Prussian  losses  were  very  heavy  in  proportion 
to  the  time  during  which  they  were  actively  engaged.  In  about 
four  hours  Billow  had  nearly  6000  casualties  out  of  30,000  men. 
This  figure  includes  about  1 200  “  missing,”  probably  stragglers 
who  had  failed  to  keep  up  with  the  long  marches  the  corps  had 

1  M.  Houssaye  (p.  351)  seems  to  follow  Muffling  in  putting  the  hour  at  which  Well¬ 
ington  expected  the  Prussians  as  between  2  and  3  ;  but,  amongst  other  things,  it  seems 
probable  from  the  Duke’s  dispositions  that  he  was  counting  on  the  Prussian  corps,  whose 
succour  Bliicher  had  promised,  to  take  post  on  his  left,  and  so  secure  that  somewhat 
weak  wing,  at  quite  an  early  hour.  But  it  was  after  noon  when  Ziethen  started. 

2  If  Prince  Bernhard’s  brigade  be  included  among  them. 


698  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


made  since  leaving  Hannut;  but  even  when  these  men  are 
deducted  the  Prussian  losses  bear  eloquent  testimony  to  the 
stubbornness  of  the  resistance  offered  by  the  15,000  FYenchmen 
who  withstood  their  attacks,  and  also  to  the  superiority  of  the 
line  over  the  column  :  the  Prussians  drawn  up  in  the  solid  columns 
common  to  the  Continental  armies  suffered  losses  out  of  all  pro¬ 
portion  to  those  of  the  British,  who  when  opposed  to  the  hostile 
infantry  fought  in  line.  Ziethen  and  Pirch  had  between  them 
600  casualties,  a  third  of  whom  were  “  missing.” 1 

The  rest  of  the  campaign  is  soon  told.  Grouchy  had  begun 
attacking  Thielmann’s  position  about  the  time  that  Biilow  first 
advanced  on  Planchenoit.  A  sharp  action  saw  the  Prussian  rear¬ 
guard  driven  over  the  Dyle,  but  the  French  failed  to  force  the 
passage  at  Bierges  or  to  make  their  way  across  from  the  suburb 
on  the  right  bank  into  the  town  on  the  left.  However,  Pajol  and 
Teste  carried  the  bridge  of  Limale,  more  than  a  mile  higher  up, 
and  supported  by  two  divisions  of  Gerard’s  corps  established 
themselves  on  Thielmann’s  right  flank  before  night  put  an  end 
to  the  conflict.  Next  morning  the  battle  was  resumed,  and  was 
going  in  favour  of  Grouchy,  who  had  forced  Thielmann  to 
abandon  Wavre  and  fall  back  towards  Louvain,  when,  about 
10.30,  an  officer  brought  him  news  of  the  total  defeat  of  the 
Emperor.  A  hasty  retreat  on  Namur  was  the  only  course 
open  to  him ;  and  this  he  successfully  accomplished,  though 
Pirch  I  was  pushed  out  to  intercept  him,  and  was  actually 
at  Mellery,  six  miles  nearer  to  Gembloux  than  Grouchy  was, 
when  the  Marshal  began  his  retreat.  Pirch  did  not  advance 
beyond  Mellery  on  the  19th;  and  though  next  day  he  over¬ 
took  Grouchy  as  the  latter  was  about  to  cross  the  Sambre  at 
Namur,  his  efforts  to  intercept  the  retreat  were  beaten  off,  and 
he  and  Thielmann’s  cavalry,  who  had  also  come  up,  suffered  a 
loss  of  1500  men  in  trying  to  storm  Namur,  which  Teste  and 
Grouchy’s  rearguard  defended  with  great  success. 

But  Grouchy’s  escape  could  not  alter  the  fortunes  of  the 
campaign.  The  main  army  made  some  efforts  to  rally,  but  it 
could  not  face  the  Allies  again  or  arrest  their  steady  advance  on 
Paris.  On  June  24th  Colville’s  division  stormed  Cambray  ;  three 
days  later  Ziethen’s  advance-guard  secured  the  bridge  of  Com- 
piegne,  and  on  the  29th  Bliicher  reached  St.  Denis.  To  inter¬ 
vene  between  Paris  and  the  arrival  of  any  assistance  from  the 

1  Siborne,  pp.  587-592. 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


699 


i8i5] 

South  (July  2nd),  he  next  crossed  the  Seine  and  established  him¬ 
self  at  Meudon  and  Chatillon,  Wellington’s  army  taking  post  at 
St.  Denis.  This  move  of  Blticher’s  would  have  been  most  risky 
and  dangerous  if  Paris  had  meant  to  fight,  but  Napoleon’s 
efforts  to  get  France  to  rally  to  his  side  had  proved  unsuccess¬ 
ful  ;  Fouche  and  Talleyrand  were  in  the  ascendant,  and  France 
would  not  stir.  July  4th  saw  a  convention  signed  at  St.  Cloud 
which  placed  Paris  in  the  hands  of  the  Allies,  the  French  troops 
retiring  behind  the  Loire.  Napoleon  had  already  fled,  after 
abdicating  in  favour  of  his  son,  and  on  July  8th,  the  day  that 
the  Emperor  embarked  at  Rochefort,  hoping  to  get  away  to 
America,  Louis  XVIII  re-entered  Paris. 

But  before  peace  could  be  finally  restored  or  the  affairs  of 
Europe  definitely  settled,  much  remained  to  be  done.  A  pro¬ 
visional  Government  had  established  itself  at  Paris  with  Fouche 
at  its  head,  while  on  July  10th  the  Allied  monarchs  arrived  at 
the  French  capital.  A  certain  number  of  the  fortresses  on  the 
North-Eastern  and  Eastern  frontiers  had  refused  to  surrenderor 
to  accept  the  suspension  of  hostilities,  and  operations  thus  went 
on  in  some  places  for  a  couple  of  months  and  more  after  the  fall 
of  Napoleon.  The  Prussians,  whose  political  views  caused  them 
to  impart  more  vigour  to  their  operations  than  was  displayed  by 
the  other  Allies,  managed  to  possess  themselves  of  about  a 
dozen  French  fortresses ;  but  the  main  army  of  the  Allies  under 
Schwarzenberg 1  after  some  sharp  fighting  with  Rapp  and  the 
corps  detailed  for  the  defence  of  Alsace,  concluded  a  suspension 
of  hostilities  on  July  24th. 

The  activity  of  the  Prussians  in  besieging  and  reducing  the 
French  fortresses  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  bitter  feelin  gs  by 
which  Bliicher  and  his  compatriots  were  animated :  it  was  their 
ardent  desire  to  make  France  drink  to  the  dregs  the  cup  of 
humiliation  which  she  had  compelled  Prussia  to  drain  after  Jena 
and  Friedland.  But  in  this  animosity  to  the  vanquished  Prussia 
stood  alone  among  the  Allies.  Wellington’s  conduct  in  his 
march  on  Paris  had  been  very  different  from  that  of  his 
colleague.  His  troops  had  paid  their  way,  pillaging  and  plunder 
had  been  strictly  prevented,  and  the  fortresses  which  surrendered 
to  him  were  occupied  in  the  name  of  Louis  XVIII,  since  it  was 
not  against  France  but  against  Napoleon  that  England  was 

1  This  included  besides  Austrians  the  contingents  of  Bavaria,  Saxony,  Ilesse- 
Darmstadt,  Wtirtemberg  and  several  minor  states. 


700  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


fighting.  Similarly  when  the  Allies  reached  Paris,  Bliicher  was 
only  prevented  from  blowing  up  the  Pont  du  Jena  by  Wellington 
placing  an  English  picquet  on  guard  over  that  bridge.  Bliicher, 
however,  carried  his  point  when  he  demanded  that  the  trophies 
and  spoils  taken  from  Berlin  to  adorn  the  French  capital  should 
be  handed  over  to  their  original  owners,  and  in  this  the  other 
nations  whose  treasures  Napoleon  had  annexed  imitated  him. 

When  it  came  to  settling  the  terms  of  peace  the  same  dis¬ 
crepancy  was  evident.  Prussia  clamoured  for  extensive  cessions 
of  territory  and  a  heavy  war  indemnity :  England  declared  she 
had  taken  part  in  the  war  as  an  ally  of  the  King  of  France,  and 
that  she  would  never  agree  to  such  treatment  of  her  ally. 
Prussia’s  proposals  voiced  the  opinion  of  Germany,  which 
favoured  the  severest  measures ;  France  must  be  treated  as  a 
conquered  state,  the  annexations  of  Louis  XV  and  Louis  XIV 
must  be  taken  from  her,  at  least  she  must  make  good  the  damage 
she  had  inflicted  on  Germany  under  Napoleon’s  rule.  The 
Crown  Prince  of  Wtirtemberg  urged  that  for  the  protection 
of  South  Germany  France  should  be  deprived  of  Alsace.  When 
Capodistria  suggested  that  a  pecuniary  indemnity  would  be 
sufficient,  Hardenberg  declared  that  at  least  the  frontier  fortresses 
must  be  handed  over,  and  von  Knesebeck,  the  mouth-piece  of 
the  King  of  Prussia,  took  the  same  line.  But  the  deciding 
voice  in  the  affairs  of  Europe  and  among  them  of  Germany 
was  to  be  that  of  the  Czar. 

Alexander  had  not  been  altogether  pleased  with  the  fact 
that  the  great  victory  had  been  won  and  Napoleon  overthrown 
without  his  presence:  he  was  equally  annoyed  by  Bliicher’s 
action  in  concluding  the  Convention  of  July  4th,  considering 
that  the  matter  should  have  been  referred  to  him.  Hence  there 
was  a  coolness  between  Prussia  and  Russia  which  Metternich, 
always  on  the  lookout  for  a  chance  to  isolate  Prussia,  assiduously 
fomented.  Alexander  had  long  ago  thrown  over  his  ideas  of 
freeing  Germany,  and  much  influenced  by  his  semi-mystical 
religious  views  he  had  come  to  look  on  Napoleon  as  the  embodi¬ 
ment  of  irreligion  and  sin,  and  to  desire  to  make  his  overthrow 
the  basis  for  the  resettlement  of  Europe  on  Christian  lines. 
Universal  peace,  the  union  of  Christian  nations  in  one  family, 
the  overthrow  of  heathendom  by  the  expulsion  of  the  Turks 
from  Europe,  these  were  among  his  projects,  and  in  accomplish¬ 
ing  these  he  thought  the  re-establishment  of  France  would  be 


THE  HUNDRED  DAYS 


701 


1815] 

more  useful  to  him  than  the  aggrandisement  of  Prussia,  either 
at  the  expense  of  France  or  by  any  rearrangement  of  Germany 
on  lines  calculated  to  increase  her  influence.  Moreover,  he  had 
no  intention  of  doing  anything  to  strengthen  a  Power  which 
might  be  troublesome  to  him,  as  Prussia  might,  in  Poland. 
Austria  was  as  little  disposed  to  do  anything  to  assist  Prussia 
or  to  humiliate  France.  All  she  desired  was  a  satisfactory 
settlement  of  the  affairs  of  Italy,  for  F'rimont’s  victory  over 
Murat  at  Tolentino  (May  2nd)  had  laid  the  peninsula  at  her 
feet,  and  marked  the  beginning  of  Austrian  predominance  in  Italy. 
Accordingly  Prussia,  finding  herself  unsupported  by  any  of  the 
other  Great  Powers,  and  by  no  means  unanimously  supported 
by  the  minor  German  states,  several  of  whom  had  good  reasons 
of  their  own  for  preferring  the  restoration  of  France  to  her 
pre-Revolution  position  to  the  predominance  of  Prussia,  had 
to  give  way. 

The  Second  Treaty  of  Paris  (Nov.  20th),  with  its  exaction 
of  an  indemnity  of  700,000,000  francs,  its  arrangements  for 
the  division  of  that  indemnity  and  for  the  occupation  of  the 
principal  fortresses  of  France  by  an  Allied  army  of  150,000 
men  in  order  to  provide  security  against  such  another  disturbance 
of  the  peace  of  Europe,  touches  on  German  history  mainly 
through  the  rectification  of  frontier,  which  was  the  principal 
penalty  inflicted  on  France  for  her  share  in  the  Hundred  Days. 
Bouillon,  Marienburg  and  Philippeville  on  the  North-East, 
Landau  and  Saarbriick  on  the  East,  were  taken  from  her,  the 
frontier  of  Rhenish  Bavaria  was  moved  up  to  the  Lauter,  and 
the  little  county  of  Gex  was  given  to  Geneva.  The  fortifications 
of  Hliningen  were  to  be  destroyed,  and  no  new  fortress  erected 
within  a  radius  of  three  leagues.  At  the  same  time,  some 
changes  were  made  in  the  redistribution  of  Germany,  Bavaria 
giving  up  the  Innviertel  to  Austria  and  obtaining  Landau 
instead. 

With  the  Second  Treaty  of  Paris  the  end  of  one  great  epoch 
in  the  history  of  Germany  is  reached,  though  the  treaty  marks 
only  the  end  of  the  first  act  of  the  great  drama  which  had  begun 
with  the  dissolution  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  and  was  to  end 
at  Versailles  in  1871.  Indeed,  in  some  ways  1806  is  a  better 
dividing  line  than  1815.  In  the  history  of  Prussia  this  is 
certainly  the  case,  but  up  till  1815  the  history  of  Prussia  is  only 
a  part  of  the  history  of  Germany.  What  happened  in  1815  was 


702  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  [1815 


that  in  the  resettlement  following  the  final  overthrow  of  Napoleon, 
and  with  him  of  the  structure  he  had  raised  in  Germany, 
Austria  made  no  effort  to  resume  the  nominal  headship  which 
she  had  laid  down  in  1806.  She  now  definitely  adopted  a  line 
of  policy  which  drew  her  away  from  Germany  and  from  the 
German  traditions  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  Yet  she  did 
not  so  completely  withdraw  herself  from  Germany  as  to  allow 
of  the  establishment  of  a  new  organisation  which  could  hope 
to  be  permanent. 

Thus  it  is  that  while  the  liberation  of  Germany  from  the 
yoke  of  Napoleon  may  be  regarded  as  the  final  act  of  the 
drama  which  was  begun  in  1792  by  the  intervention  of  Austria 
and  Prussia  in  the  internal  affairs  of  France,  yet  it  also  belongs 
to  the  history  of  nineteenth-century  Germany.  The  forces  which 
Napoleon  called  into  being,  both  by  his  reforms  and  by  his 
oppression,  were  to  be  the  influences  which  actuated  and  agitated 
Germany  until  unity,  though  a  not  quite  complete  unity  even 
then,  was  at  last  achieved  under  the  leadership  of  Prussia,  until 
a  “German  Empire”  was  created  which  is  neither  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire  nor  the  mediaeval  Kingdom  of  Germany.  But 
in  1815  those  forces,  let  loose  though  they  had  been  when 
Germany  rose  to  shake  off  the  yoke  of  Napoleon,  had  for  the 
time  been  put  under  restraint.  With  Metternich  at  the  helm 
and  the  “Holy  Alliance”  an  accomplished  fact,  Europe  and 
with  it  Germany  had  slipped  for  a  time  into  a  backwater  of 
reaction. 


.  THE  HOUSE  OF  HAPSBURG 


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INDEX 


Abens,  battle  of  the  (1809),  531 
Achmet,  Sultan  of  Turkey  (1703-1730), 
72 

Adolphus  Frederick  of  Holstein,  160 
Adolphus  Frederick  11,  Duke  of  Meck- 
lenburg-Strelitz  (1708-1749),  54 
Agrarian  reforms  of  Joseph  11,  334-338 
Ainali  Karak,  Convention  of  (1784),  316 
Alberoni,  Cardinal,  69,  75—77 
Albini,  Francis  Joseph  von  (chief  minister 
of  Elector  Charles  Joseph  of  Mayence), 
436 

Alessandria,  Convention  of  (1S00),  444 
Alexander  1  (Czar  of  Russia),  cf.  474  n.  ; 
grows  hostile  to  Napoleon,  477  ff.  ; 
responsibility  for  defeat  of  Austerlitz, 
490,  504  ;  makes  peace  of  Tilsit,  516  ; 
alliance  with  Napoleon,  517-518,  521  ; 
at  Erfurt  (1808),  522  ;  policy  of,  1808- 
1809,  527 ;  quarrel  with  Napoleon, 
566-568;  attitude  in  1S13,  573; 

champions  German  movement  against 
Napoleon, 570,  Chapters  XXX. -XXXII. 
passim ;  anxious  to  command  Allies, 
598  ;  delays  attack  at  Dresden,  609  ; 
keen  on  deposing  Napoleon,  641  ;  de¬ 
cisive  influence  over  Treaty  of  Paris 
(1S14),  642  ;  at  Vienna,  648  ;  antagon¬ 
ism  to  Metternich,  648 ;  designs  on 
Saxony  and  Poland,  652-655 ;  has 
decisive  voice  in  settlement  of  1815, 
700 

Alten,  Sir  Charles,  at  Quatre  Bras,  679  ; 
at  Waterloo,  691 

d’Alton,  Count  (Austrian  general),  341 
Alsace,  ceded  to  France  in  1648,  31  ; 
condition  of,  etc.,  in  1715,  57  ;  affected 
by  French  Revolution,  353,  357,  376 
Alvensleben  (Prussian  general),  foretells 
collapse  of  Prussia,  424 
Amberg,  battle  of  (1796),  405 
Anhalt,  59,  371,  520;  contribution  to 
Napoleon’s  army  (1813),  596  n.  ; 

Princes  of,  651 

Cf.  Leopold  of  Anhalt-Dessau 
Anna  (daughter  of  Peter  the  Great),  69, 
150m,  369  n. 

Anna  Ivanovna,  Empress  of  Russia 

(1727-1740),  no 


Anspach  Hohenzollern,  52 ;  absorb 
Baireuth,  314  n.  ;  Prussia’s  right  to, 
admitted,  314;  line  extinct  (1792), 
371,  519,  656 ;  Bernadotte  crosses 

territory  en  route  to  Danube  (1805), 
489. 

Anthony  Ulrich,  Duke  of  Brunswick- 
Wolfenbuttel  (1704-17 14),  26,  58  ;  cf. 
genealogy,  704 

Apraxin,  Stephen  (Russian  general), 
203  ;  court-martialed,  228 
Arcis  sur  Aube,  battle  of  (1814),  640 
Aremberg,  Princes  of,  59,  461,  464  ;  join 
Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  496  ; 
territories  annexed  to  France,  519. 
d’Argenson,  Marquis  de,  Foreign  Minister 
of  France,  152,  154,  156,  162; 

negotiates  with  Sardinia,  164  ;  166 
“Armed  Neutrality”  (of  1800-1801), 

457,  458  .  ' 

Armistice  of  Poischwitz  (1813),  587 
Arndt,  Ernst  Moritz  (German  poet),  523, 
630,  642 

Aschafifenburg,  principality  of,  497,  552 
Aspern,  battle  of  (1S09),  537-538 
Auerstadt,  battle  of  (1806),  508,  509 
Augereau,  Pierre  Frangois  (French 
Marshal),  451,  4S8  ;  in  campaign  of 
1806,  506-510,  513;  of  1813,  619; 
of  1814,  639 
Augsburg,  Peace  of,  3 
League  of  (1688),  26 
Bishopric  of,  48 ;  annexed  by 
Bavaria,  461 

Augustus  Frederick  1  of  Saxony 
(Augustus  1  of  Poland),  election  to 
Poland,  19,  39,  97,  7°6 
Augustus  Frederick  11  of  Saxony  and 
of  Poland  (1733-1763),  elected  King 
of  Poland,  98  ;  claim  on  Austria,  109  ; 
in  Austrian  Succession  War,  Chapters 
VI I. -IX.  ;  joins  Bavaria,  122  ;  makes 
peace  with  Austria,  131  ;  in  Second 
Silesian  War,  151-161,  167  ;  joins 

Austria  in  1756,  196  ;  beset  in  Pirna, 
I97-I99  5  escapes  to  Warsaw,  199 ; 
negotiates  peace  (1763),  289;  death 
(1763),  303 ;  706 

Augustus  III  (Frederick)  of  Saxony; 


7io  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


succeeds  as  Elector  (1763),  303  ;  365  ; 
joins  Prussia  in  1806,  503 ;  makes 
peace,  510;  becomes  King,  510; 
Grand  Duke  of  Warsaw,  551  ;  attitude 
in  1813,  579;  joins  Napoleon,  583; 
taken  prisoner,  652 ;  accepts  Allies’ 
terms  (1815),  654  ;  706 
Augustus  George,  last  Margrave  of 
Baden-Baden  (1761-1771),  370 
Augustus  William,  Duke  of  Brunswick - 
Wolfenbiittel  (1714-1731),  59,  83  ;  704 
Augustus  William  of  Prussia,  98,  212  ;  705 
Augustus  William,  Duke  of  Brunswick- 
Bevern  (1746-1781), 205-212,  322  ;  704 
Aulic  Chamber  ( Hofkammer ),  35,  78 
Aulic  Council  ( Reichshofrath ) ,  Imperial 
Chamber  of  Justice,  8 ;  its  history, 
15  302>  320,  371 

Austerlitz,  battle  of  (1805),  490 
Austria,  possessions  and  condition  of,  in 
1 7 1 5 j  31-36;  failures  in  Italy  and 
Turkey,  Chapter  VI.  ;  condition  of,  in 
1740,  1 05- 1 07  ;  reforms  of  Maria 

Theresa,  175-182;  of  Joseph  11,  328- 
339;  condition  of,  in  1792,  352; 

conduct  of,  in  1795,  394  ;  makes  peace 
with  France  (1797),  4ioff.  ;  conduct  of, 
412  ;  under  Thugut,  413-414  ;  made  an 
Hereditary  Empire,  474 ;  attitude  to 
Napoleon,  476  th  ;  joins  Russia  and 
Great  Britain,  480 ;  in  campaign  of 
1805,  Chapter  XXV.  ;  losses  at  Press- 
burg,  493  ;  Napoleon’s  policy  towards, 
494-495  ^  inaction  in  1807,  515; 

accepts  Continental  System,  520 ; 
attitude  in  1808,  521;  changes  in,  1805- 
1809,  526-527  ;  quarrel  with  Napoleon, 
528  ff.  ;  losses  in  1809,  544-545  ;  re¬ 
action  in,  545,  565  ;  alliance  with 
Napoleon,  566,  567  ;  attitude  in  1813, 
572,  578,  586  ;  negotiates  armistice  of 
Poischwitz,  587-590 ;  concludes  Con¬ 
vention  of  Reichenbach,  590 ;  joins 
the  Allies,  594 ;  attitude  to  Napoleon, 
635  ;  views  as  to  reconstruction, 
Chapter  XXXIV.  passim ,  esp.  645, 
652 ;  renounces  designs  on  Bavaria, 
619,  cf.  647  ;  gains  and  losses  in  1815, 
657  ;  attitude  in  1815,  702 
Austrian  Army,  condition  in  1740,  103  ; 
reformed,  176  ;  condition  in  1756,  199  ; 
in  1792,  379,  443,  478;  changes  in 
command  of  (1805),  481-482;  reforms 
in,  526,  527  ;  in  1813,  578  n. 

Bachelu  (French  general)  in  Waterloo 
campaign,  690 
Baden,  Peace  of,  1 

Baden-Baden  [cf.  Louis  of,  Louis  George 
(1707-1761),  Augustus  George  (1617- 
1 77 1 )]»  extent  of,  50  ;  united  to  Baden- 
Durlach,  370  ;  conduct  in  1796,  395  n., 


404 ;  connection  with  Russia,  458;  gains 
and  losses  in  1803,  462  ;  becomes  Elec¬ 
torate  (1803),  462, 469;  assists  Napoleon 
(1805),  483,  488  ;  Grand  Duchy,  494  ; 
joins  Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  497  ; 
contingent  in  Spain,  522  n.  ;  assists 
Napoleon  (1809),  529  ff.  ;  development 
of,  550;  sends  contingent  to  Grand 
Army  of  (1812),  568;  of  1813,  596 
n.  ;  defection  from  Napoleon,  631  ; 
assists  Allies  (1814),  636,  651  ;  con¬ 
tingent  of,  in  1815,  662  n. 
Baden-Durlach,  extent  of,  50 ;  united  to 
Baden-Baden,  370  n.s. 

Cf.  Charles  William  of  (1709-1735), 
Charles  Frederick  of  (1738-1821) 
Bagration,  Prince  Peter  (Russian  general), 
in  1805,  488,  491-492 
Baireuth  Hohenzollern,  53,  203 ;  line 
becomes  extinct  (1769),  314  ;  territories 
pass  to  Prussia  (1792),  371  ;  to  Bavaria, 
519,  656:  cf.  705 

Bamberg,  Bishopric  of,  48  ;  annexed  by 
Bavaria  (1803),  463 
Banko- Deputation  (Austria),  177 
Bar,  Confederation  of  (1767),  304 
Barclay  de  Tolly,  Prince  (Russian 
general),  spring  campaign  of  1813, 
584-588,  592 ;  autumn  campaign  of 
1813,  597-633 

Barenklau  (or  Bernklau,  Austrian 
general),  127;  takes  Munich,  135,  152 
Baring,  Major  (K.G.L. ),  defends  La 
Haye  Sainte,  687-688,  690 
Bartenstein,  John  Christopher  (Austrian 
minister),  102,  108,  1 1 7,  172 
Bartenstein,  Treaty  of  (1807),  515 
Bassignano,  battle  of  ( 1745),  164 
Batavian  Republic,  established  (1795), 
391  ;  French  interference  in  (1798), 
422,  437  ;  made  into  a  kingdom,  479 
Bautzen,  battle  of  (1813),  584-586 
Bavaria,  relations  with  Louis  xiv,  26, 
36,  43  ;  with  Austria,  32  ;  its  territories, 
policy,  etc.,  in  1715,  42-44;  allied 
with  France  and  Spain  (1741),  121  ; 
invaded  by  Khevenhiiller,  127  ff.  ;  in 
1743,  I35»  152;  comes  to  terms  with 
Austria  (1745),  I54>  Joseph  n’s 

designs  on,  310-314,  318-319;  con¬ 
dition  in  1792,  364;  conduct  in  1796, 
406 ;  Thugut’s  designs  on,  420,  425, 
439  ;  supports  Second  Coalition  (1799), 
425,  436  n.,  439;  action  in  1801,  456- 
458  ;  gains  and  losses  (1803),  460,  461  ; 
attacks  Imperial  Knights,  467-468 ; 
condition  of,  in  1803,  469-470;  joins 
Napoleon  (1805),  483  ;  obtains  Tyrol, 
493 ;  made  a  Kingdom,  494 ;  joins 
Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  497  ; 
receives  Nuremberg,  520;  assists 
Napoleon  against  Austria,  529-544  ; 


INDEX 


7  ii 


gains  in  1809,  545  ;  development  of, 
549-55°  ;  sends  contingent  to  Grand 
Army  1812,  568,  570;  attitude  of,  in 
1813,  579  5  contribution  to  Napoleon’s 
army  (1813),  596  n.  ;  deserts  Napoleon, 
618  ;  concludes  Treaty  of  Ried  (1813), 
619;  tries  to  intercept  Napoleon’s 
retreat,  633  ;  assists  Allies  (1814), 
636-642,  647  ;  views,  etc. ,  of,  at  Vienna, 
649,  651  ;  supports  Talleyrand  over 
Saxony,  653  ;  gains,  etc.,  in  1815,  656  ; 
contingent  of,  in  1815,  662  ;  affected 
by  Second  Treaty  of  Paris,  701 
Bavaria,  cf.  Maximilian  1  (1598-1651), 
Ferdinand  Maria  (1651-1679),  Maxi¬ 
milian  Emanuel  (1679-1726),  Joseph 
Clement,  Charles  Albert  (1726-1745), 
Clement  Augustus,  Maximilian  Joseph 
(1745-1777),  Charles  Theodore  (1777- 
1799),  Maximilian  Joseph  (1799-1825) 
Genealogy,  707 

Cf.  also  Montgelas,  Seckendorff, 
Wrede 

Beauharnais,  Eugene,  496,  535 ;  victorious 
at  Raab,  540;  at  Wagram,  541-548; 
553.  572  ;  spring  campaign  of  1813, 
579-588  ;  sent  to  Italy,  589,  635 
Beauharnais,  Stephanie,  496 
Belgians.  See  Dutch-Belgians 
Belgiojoso,  Count  (Austrian  minister), 
Governor  of  the  Netherlands,  340,  341 
Belgrade,  captured  by  Eugene  (1717), 
74;  lost  to  Turkey  (1739),  103; 

captured  by  Loudoun,  326 
Peace  of,  103 

Bellegarde,  Count  Henri  de  (Austrian 
general),  in  1799,  427,  430,  434;  in 
1800,  449;  in  1809,  530-544 
Belleisle,  Count  Charles  Louis  (French 
Marshal),  no;  embassy  to  Germany, 
121,  123;  escapes  from  Prague,  133, 
i65 

Bennigsen,  Count  (Russian  general), 
490;  campaign  of  1806-1807,  5 1 3— 
516  ;  of  1813,  620,  626 
Berg,  ceded  to  Neuburg  Wittelsbachs 
(1666),  45  ;  Prussian  claim  on,  93,  95, 
128  n.  ;  made  a  Grand  Duchy  (1806), 

496  ;  joins  Confederation  of  the  Rhine, 

497  ;  increased,  519  ;  its  development, 
553-555  ;  contingent  in  Spain,  554 ; 
in  Russia,  568;  in  1813,  59611.  ;  647 

Bergen,  battle  of  (1759),  265 
Bernadotte,  Jean,  beaten  at  Amberg 
(1796),  405;  at  Vienna,  421,  428; 
Minister  of  War,  431;  473,  485,  488- 
491;  campaign  of  1806,  505-510;  of 
1809,  529-544 ;  Crown  Prince  of 
Sweden,  590 ;  declares  against 
NapOleon,  591,  593,  598;  autumn 
campaign  of  1813,  602-631  (esp.  604, 
626,  628),  632,  636 


Bernis,  Abbe  (French  minister),  190,  228  ; 
retires,  250 

Berthier,  Louis  (French  Marshal),  529  ff. 
Berthold  of  Henneberg,  Elector  of 
Mayence  (1484-1504),  14,  475 
Bertrand,  Henri  Gratien,  Count  (French 
general),  in  spring  campaign  of  1813, 
580-585  ;  autumn,  600-633 
Cf.  Gross  Beeren,  Dennewitz 
Berwick,  Marshal,  98,  100 
Bessieres  (French  Marshal),  491 
Bestuchev,  Count  Alexis  (Russian 
minister),  150,  155,  203  ;  dismissed,  228 
Beyme,  K.  von  (Prussian  minister),  51 1 
Birkenfeld  branch  of  Wittelsbach  family, 
52,  707  ;  district  ceded  to  Oldenburg 
(1815),  656 

Bischoffswerder,  Johann  Rudolf  (Prussia), 
348,  354 

“Black  Legion,”  534-535 
Blucher,  Gebhardt,  Marshal,  campaign 
of  1806,  506-510,  559,  579;  spring 
campaign  of  1813,  580-588,  593; 

autumn  campaign  of  1813,  597-633, 
esp.  Katzbach,  620-622 ;  pursues 
Napoleon,  633  ;  in  campaign  of  1814, 
636-642;  in  1815,  Chapter  XXXV. 
passim ,  esp.  666 ;  battle  of  Ligny, 
671-678,  683 ;  moves  on  Waterloo, 
687-689;  at  Waterloo,  693 ff.;  keen 
for  revenge,  699,  700 
Bliimegen,  Count  Henry  (Austrian 
minister),  299,  301,  333,  t338 
Bohemia  and  the  Thirty  Years’  War,  4, 
13m  ;  its  Chancery,  35  ;  the  Bohemian 
vote,  38  ;  condition  of,  334 
Borodino,  battle  of  (1812),  570 
Brandenburg,  Electorate  of,  office  of 
Arch  Butler  attached  to  it,  19 ; 
territories  and  policy,  40-42 
Cf.  Hohenzollern  ;  Prussia 
Brause  (Prussian  general),  at  Ligny, 
674-677 

Breisgau,  32 ;  transferred  to  Duke  of 
Modena,  410,  453,  462 ;  divided  by 
Baden  and  Wiirtemberg  (1805),  493 
Bremen,  city  of,  23,  460,  651 
Bremen  (Archbishopric  of,  cf.  also 
Verden),  passes  to  Sweden,  21  ;  ceded 
to  Hanover,  68 

Brentano  (Austrian  general),  261,  263- 
264,  287 

Breslau,  116  ;  battle  of  (1757),  219-220  ; 
taken  by  Austrians,  220  ;  retaken  by 
Frederick,  226 
Brieg,  1 1 6  ;  falls  (1741),  120 
Brienne  sur  Aube,  battle  of  (1814),  637 
British  troops  employed  in  Germany 
(1743),  136-140;  at  Fontenoy,  156, 
167-168  ;  sent  to  join  Ferdinand  of 
Brunswick  (1758),  250,  266;  at 

Minden,  268-269,  280,  284,  288 ;  in 


712  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Netherlands  ( 1 793~ 1 795)»  3S6ff.  ;  in 
Germany  in  1805,  490;  in  1813,  605, 
619;  at  Leipzig,  629;  in  1815,  661; 
at  Waterloo,  688-697 
Brixen,  Bishopric  of,  48  ;  annexed  by 
Austria,  453,  462 

Broglie,  Comte  de  (French  Marshal), 
127,  128,  13 1  ;  evacuates  Bavaria 

(1743),  135 

Broglie,  Due  de  (French  general),  replaces 
Soubise,  233;  campaign  of  1759,  265- 
271  ;  of  1760,  280-281 ;  of  1761,  284 
Browne,  Count  Ulysses  (Austrian 
general),  campaign  of  1756,  197-200; 
campaign  of  1757,  205 
Briihl,  Count  (Saxon  minister),  160,  195, 
J97 

Brunswick-Bevern,  Augustus  William  of 
(Prussian  general),  205-210;  in  com¬ 
mand  in  Silesia  (1757),  218-220. 
Ferdinand  Albert  11  of,  succeeds  to 
Brunswick-Wolfenbtittel  (1735),  367 

Cf.  genealogy,  704 
Brunswick  Hussars,  535  n. 
Brunswick-Liineburg,  cf.  Electorate  of 
Hanover 

Brunswick  Oels,  Frederick  William  of, 
his  rising  in  1809,  534-535  ;  restored 
to  Brunswick-Wolfenbtittel  (1813), 
631  ;  killed  at  Quatre  Bras,  679  ;  704 
Brunswick  Oels  Light  Infantry,  535  n. 
Brunswick-Wolfenbtittel,  Duchy  of,  for 
neutrality  in  1757,  203;  submits  to 
Richelieu,  215;  in  1792,  367,  464; 
confiscated  by  Napoleon,  51 1;  part 
of  Kingdom  of  Westphalia,  518;  old 
dynasty  restored,  1813,  631  ;  con¬ 
tingent  of,  in  1815,  665  n.  ;  at  Quatre 
Bras,  679  ;  at  Waterloo,  689,  691. 

Cf.  also  Anthony  Ulrich,  Augustus 
William,  Charles,  Charles  William 
Ferdinand,  Ferdinand,  Ferdinand 
Albert,  Frederick  William,  Lewis 
Rudolf 

Genealogy,  704 

Bukovina,  acquired  by  Austria,  309 
Btilow,  Friedrich  (Prussian  general), 
573  ;  spring  campaign  of  1813,  584- 
588  ;  autumn  campaign,  597-633  (cf. 
Gross  Beeren,  Dennewitz) ;  campaign 
of  1814,  639-642;  of  1815,  Chapter 
XXXV.  passim ,  esp.  667 ;  absence 
from  Ligny,  671  ;  reaches  Wavre, 
683  ;  move  on  Waterloo,  685-687  ;  at 
Waterloo,  693 
Bute,  Earl  of,  286,  293  n. 

Buturlin,  Alexander  (Russian  general), 
281  ff 

Buxhowden,  Count  Frederick  William 
(Russian  general),  513 
Bylandt,  General  (Dutch-Belgian),  at 
Waterloo,  689 


Caldiero,  battle  of  (1805),  487 
Calvinists  and  the  Thirty  Years’  War,  4  ; 
in  Palatinate,  45  ;  in  Wurtemberg, 

551 

Cambrai,  Congress  of  (1722),  79 
Campo  Formio,  Peace  of  (1797),  410, 

.  411 

Campo  Santo,  battle  of  (1743),  143 
Canning,  George,  becomes  Foreign 
^  Secretary,  515  ;  544 
Carlos,  Don  (=  Charles  in  of  Spain), 
So ;  obtains  Parma,  82  ;  obtains  the 
Two  Sicilies,  101,  143 ;  succeeds  to 
Spain,  272 

Carniola,  30  ;  ceded  to  Napoleon,  544  ; 

restored  to  Austria  ( 1 8 1 5 ) ,  657  n. 
Carteret,  John,  Lord  (afterwards  Earl 
Granville),  70,  1 3 1  ;  attempts  to  revive 
the  Grand  Alliance,  140-141,  145 
Castiglione,  battle  of  (1796),  407 
Castlereagh,  Lord,  takes  office,  515,  544’ 
639;  at  Chaumont,  641,  643;  at 
Vienna,  648 ;  attitude  on  Saxon 
question,  653 

Castries,  de  (French  general),  campaign 
of  1760,  280  ;  of  1762,  288 
Cathcart,  Lord,  expedition  to  the  Weser 
(1805),  490,  499;  at  Vienna  (1815), 
648,  662  n. 

Catherine  1  of  Russia  (1725-1727),  102 
Catherine  11  of  Russia  (1762-1796),  287  ; 
share  in  Partition  of  Poland,  306-309  ; 
brings  about  Peace  of  Tetschen,  313; 
Balkan  policy,  315,  316  ;  alliance  with 
J  oseph  11,  322-323  ;  war  with  Turkey 
(17S7-1792),  324-326,  354;  Second 
Partition  of  Poland,  382  ;  Third  Par¬ 
tition,  396-397  ;  death  (1796),  408 
Chalil  Pasha  (Grand  Vizier  of  Turkey),  74 
Champaubert,  battle  of  (1814),  638 
Charles,  Duke  of  Brunswick  (1735-1780), 

36 7,  704 

Charles  1,  Landgrave  of  Iiesse-Cassel 

^  (1676-1 730b  50’  368 

Charles  VI,  Emperor  (1711-1740),  his 
attitude  to  the  Peace  of  Utrecht,  33  ; 
acquires  Sicily,  77  ;  issues  Pragmatic 
Sanction,  79,  80;  and  the  Julich-Berg 
question,  95-96;  his  last  wars, 
Chapter  VI.  ;  death,  104,  114  ;  703 
Charles  xn  of  Sweden,  his  relations 
with  Saxony-Poland,  38 ;  connection 
with  Zweibrucken,  52  ;  share  in  the 
Northern  War  (1699-1721),  Chapter 
III.  ;  death,  69 

Charles  Albert  of  Bavaria  (1726-1745)’ 
79,  83 ;  in  Polish  Succession  War, 
100  ;  claim  on  Austria,  109  ;  in  Austrian 
Succession  War, Chapters  VII.  and  IX. ; 
mistaken  strategy,  125  ;  elected 
Emperor  as  Charles  VII,  128  ;  death 
(1745),  152  ;  707 


INDEX 


713 


Charles  of  Austria,  Archduke,  succeeds 
Clerfayt,  401  ;  campaign  of  1796, 
402-407;  of  1797,  408;  political 

views,  412;  campaign  of  1799,  426- 
428,  431-432,  435-436;  of  1800,  451, 
464;  disinclined  to  fight  (1804),  478; 
resigns  Presidency  of  War  Couucil, 
481  ;  campaign  of  1805,  487-488,  515; 
military  reforms  of,  526-527  ;  against 
war  (1809),  528;  campaign  of  1809, 
529-544  ;  strategy  criticised,  532,  539 
n.  ;  resigns,  544  ;  not  employed  in  1813, 
598  ;  645  ;  703 

Charles  Alexander,  Duke  of  Wurtemberg 
(1733-1737),  371 

Charles  Augustus,  Duke  of  Saxe-Weimar 
(1758-1828),  321,  365-366,  473,  510 
Charles  Emmanuel  in  of  Sardinia  (1730- 
1 773),  98,  121  ;  concludes  Treaty  of 
Worms  (1743),  141,  163-165,  169 
Charles  Emmanuel  iv  of  Sardinia  (1796- 
1802),  423,  432,  453 

Charles  Eugene,  Duke  of  Wurtemberg 

( 1 737— 1 793)>  J54»  167,  203,  371 
Charles  Frederick,  Margrave  of  Baden- 
Durlach  (1738-1821),  203;  at  Hoch- 
kirch,  224,  226  ;  joins  Fiirstenbund , 
321;  acquires  Baden-Baden,  370; 
connection  with  Russia,  458  ;  becomes 
Elector  (1803),  462,  468;  attitude  to¬ 
wards  abduction  of  Due  d’Enghien, 
473-475  ;  supports  Napoleon  (1805), 
483  ;  becomes  Grand  Duke,  494,  550  ; 
570  ;  deserts  Napoleon,  631 
Charles  Frederick  of  Schleswig-Holstein 
(1703-1739),  56,  66,  69,  150,  369  n. 
Charles  Leopold,  Duke  of  Mecklenburg- 
Schwerin  (1713-1747),  54  j  quarrel 
with  Estates,  69  ff.  ;  deposed,  94,  369 
Charles  Lewis,  Elector  Palatine  (1648- 
1680),  18,  44 

Charles  of  Lorraine,  Elector  of  Treves 
(1711-1716),  37 

Charles  of  Lorraine  (Austrian  general) ; 
campaign  of  1742,  1 29-1 31  ;  of  1743, 
135-140;  of  1744,  14S-152;  of  1745, 
157-161  ;  in  Netherlands,  167,  180  ; 
campaign  of  1757,  205-208,  212,  218- 
220;  death  (17S0),  340 
Charles  Philip  of  Neuburg,  Elector 
Palatine  (1716-1742),  81,  83;  perse¬ 
cutes  Protestants,  85,  95,  128  ;  death, 
x49 

Cf.  Wittelsbach  genealogy,  707 
Charles  of  Simmern,  Elector  Palatine 
(1680-1685),  extinction  of  Simmern 
Wittelsbachs  at  his  death,  19 
Charles  Theodore  of  Sulzbach,  succeeds 
as  Elector  Palatine  (1742),  128,  149, 
154,  157,  167,  185  n.  ;  supports  Maria 
Theresa  in  1756,  203,  249;  claim  on 
Bavaria,  310;  succession  to  Bavaria, 


311-314,  318,  321,  357,  364;  makes 
peace  with  France,  399  ;  death  (1799), 
425 

Cf.  Wittelsbach  genealogy,  707 
Charles  11  of  Zweibriicken  -  Birkenfeld 

( 1 775~ 1  795)j  3iL  319,  321,  362,  364, 

707 

Charles  William,  Margrave  of  Baden- 
Durlach  (1709-1738),  50,  370 
Charles  William  Ferdinand,  Hereditary 
Prince  of  Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel,  in 
campaign  of  1759,  269-271  ;  in  1760, 
281  ;  in  1761,  284  ;  of  1762,  289,  325  ; 
succeeds  to  Duchy  (1780),  367  ;  invades 
France  (1792),  379-3^0,  384,  387,  415, 
417,  438,  479;  supports  Prussia  in 
1806,  505  ;  campaign  of  1806,  505-509  ; 
death,  51 1  ;  704 

Chasteler,  John  Gabriel  (Austrian 
general),  536,  539 
Chatillon,  Conference  of,  641 
Chaumont,  Treaty  of  (1814),  641  ;  re¬ 
newed  (1815),  660 

Chauvelin,  Count  Louis  (French  diplo¬ 
mat),  98 

Chavigny  (French  envoy  at  Munich),  149, 

J54  . 

Chemnitz,  Philip  Boguslaw  ( =  Hippolytus 
a  Lapide),  7 

Cherasco,  Peace  of  (1796),  402 
Chevert  (French  general),  133 ;  at 
Hastenbeck,  214,  249 
Choiseul,  Due  de,  becomes  Foreign 
Minister  of  France  (1758),  251,  285  ; 
fall  of,  307 

Chotek,  Count  Rudolf  (Austrian  minister), 
173,  178,  299 

Chotek,  Rudolf  (the  younger)  (Austrian 
minister),  338 

Chotusitz,  battle  of  (also  called  Czaslau), 
1742,  129-131 

Christian  Augustus  of  Holstein-Eutin, 
Bishop  of  Ltibeck  (1705-1726),  Regent 
of  Schleswig-Holstein,  56,  66 
Christian  Louis,  Duke  of  Mecklenburg- 
Schwerin  (1747-1756),  84,  94 
Church  in  Austria,  328-330 
Circles,  the,  13 
Clement  ill  (Pope),  330 
Clement  xiv  (Pope),  330 
Clement  Augustus  of  Bavaria,  Elector  of 
Cologne  (1723-1761),  81,  122  ;  707 
Clement  Wenceslaus  of  Saxony,  Elector 
of  Treves  (1768-1803),  373,  376,  421  ; 
706 

Clerfayt,  Joseph  (Austrian  general), 
victory  at  Kolofat,  349  ;  campaign  of 
1794,  389-390;  of  1795,  398-400; 
quarrels  with  Thugut,  400 
Clermont,  Comte  de  (French  general), 
campaign  of  1758,  232-233,  248-249 
Cleves  -  Jlilich,  inheritance,  41,  45; 


714  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Prussia  loses  her  share,  392,  517;  re¬ 
gains  it  at  Vienna  (1815),  655 
Closter  Seven,  Convention  of  (1757),  216  ; 
broken  off,  231 

Coalition,  the  First  (1792-1797),  Chapters 
XIX.  and  XX.,  esp.  385  ;  collapse  of, 
391. 

Coalition,  the  Second  (1798-1801), 
Chapters  XXI.  and  XXII.  ;  formation, 
424  ;  Prussia’s  abstention,  424  ;  Russia 
withdraws,  438  ;  collapse  of,  448 
Coalition,  the  Third  (1805-1806),  causes 
of,  Chapter  XXIV.  ;  its  formation, 
478-480  :  cf.  Chapter  XXV. 

Cobenzl,  Charles,  180 
Cobenzl,  Louis,  413,  422 ;  replaces 

Thugut,  448 ;  at  Luneville,  449,  475  ; 
favours  peace  (1804),  478,  481  ;  re¬ 
placed  by  Stadion,  498 
Cobenzl,  Philip,  Vice-Chancellor  of 
Austria,  342,  354;  dismissed,  385,  413 
Cocceji,  Samuel  von  (Prussia),  89,  296 
Coigni,  Marshal  (French),  148,  155 
Colberg,  238;  besieged  (1760),  277; 
taken  by  Russians  (1761),  283;  siege 
of  (1807),  514 

Colloredo,  Jerome  (Austrian  general),  at 
Leipzig,  626-628 

Colloredo,  Joseph  (Austrian  general), 
245 

Colloredo,  Rudolf  (Vice-Chancellor  of 
Austria),  182 

Cologne,  Electorate  of,  office  of  the 
Arch  Chancellor  of  Italy  attached  to, 
19;  its  territories  and  position,  36,  48  ; 
in  1791,  372;  fate  in  1803,  462 
Cologne,  Electors  of ;  cf.  Joseph  Clement 
of  Bavaria  (1688-1723)  : 

Clement  Augustus  of  Bavaria  (1723- 
1761),  81,  83,  100,  122,  167,  185, 
204 

Maximilian  Joseph  of  Austria  (1780- 
1801),  315,320,  321,373,  448,459 

Maximilian  of  Rottenfels  (1761- 
1780),  315,  321 
Comitial  rechte ,  9 
Committee  of  Public  Safety,  385 
Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  455  ;  formed 
(July  1806),  497  ;  enlarged,  510; 

assists  Napoleon  ( 1807),  514  ;  enlarged, 
520 ;  contingents  in  Spain,  522  n.  ; 
its  contribution  to  Napoleon’s  army 
(1813),  596;  loyalty  wavering,  599; 
collapses  after  Leipzig,  630 
Conference,  the  (Austrian  Council  of 
State),  35  ;  its  members  in  1740,  108 
Consulate  (France),  established,  438 
Contades,  Marquis  de  (French  general), 
214;  campaign  of  1758,  249-250;  of 
1759,  266-271  ;  superseded,  271 
Conti,  Prince  of,  candidate  for  Poland 

(1763),  303 


“Continental  System,”  the,  518,  520, 
547-548,  567 

Corfu,  attacked  by  Turks,  72 
Cornwallis,  Admiral,  480 
Cornwallis,  Lord,  298 
Cottbus,  given  to  Saxony  (1807),  517, 
579  ;  restored  to  Prussia,  655 
Crefeld,  battle  of  (1758),  249 
Crozka,  battle  of  (1739),  103 
“Cumberland  Plussars”  at  Waterloo, 
688 

Cumberland,  William  Augustus,  Duke 
of,  campaign  of  1745,  155,  166; 

campaign  of,  1747,  168  ;  campaign  of 
1757,  214-216 

Custine,  Comte  Philip  de  (French 
general),  378,  381,  384 
Custrin,  21  n.  ;  attacked  by  Russians 
(1758),  237,510;  garrisoned  by  French 
(1808),  522 

Cuxhaven,  occupied  by  Napoleon  (1803), 
473 

Czartoriski,  Adam  (confidant  of 
Alexander  1),  516 
Czartoriskis  (Polish  nobles),  303 
Czernitchev  (Russian  general),  277,  282, 
286-287 

Dalberg,  Charles,  Coadjutor  to  Elector 
of  Mayence,  373,  456,  458 ;  made 
Arch  Chancellor  and  Primate,  463  ; 
475  ;  joins  Confederation  of  Rhine  as 
Prince  Primate,  497  ;  receives  Fulda, 
519;  receives  Frankfurt,  520,  552 
Dalmatia,  annexed  by  Austria,  410  ; 
ceded  to  Napoleon,  549  ;  restored  to 
Austria  (1815),  657 

Damad  Ali  Pasha,  Grand  Vizier  of 
Turkey,  72 

Dantzic,  309,  523,  373  ;  acquired  by 
Prussia,  383;  siege  of  (1807),  514; 
falls,  516;  fate  in  1807,  517;  be¬ 
sieged  in  1813,  580;  falls,  632;  re¬ 
gained  by  Prussia  (1815),  655 
Daru,  Count  Pierre  (French  minister), 
522 

Daun,  Count  Philip,  Marshal,  177? 
replaces  Serbelloni,  209  ;  wins  Ivolin, 
210-21 1  ;  invades  Silesia,  218-220; 
given  chief  command  (1758),  233  ; 
campaign  of  1758,  233-237,  243-248  ; 
campaign  of  1759,  252,  260,  264 ; 
campaign  of  1760,  273-279;  of  1761, 
281-283;  of  1762,  287-288  ;  President 
of  War  Council  (1762),  301  ;  death, 
3oia 

Davoiit,  Louis  Nicolas,  Marshal,  485, 
488,  491-492  ;  campaign  of  1806,  505- 
510,  513;  of  1809,  529-544;  of  1813, 
587>  59 1 5  595?  601,  605  ;  after  Leipzig, 
632 

Defenestratio  of  Prague,  4 


INDEX 


7*5 


Denmark,  connection  with  College  of 
Princes,  21  ;  with  Schleswig-Holstein 
(g.v.),  55-56  ;  connection  with  Olden- 
bm-g,  56 ;  exchanges  it  against  Holstein, 
369  ;  negotiates  Convention  of  Closter 
Seven,  216;  joins  Napoleon  (1813), 
591  ;  makes  peace  at  Kiel  (1814),  632  ; 
loses  Norway,  657 
Dennewitz,  battle  of  (1813),  616 
Desaix,  Joseph  (French  general),  wins 
Marengo,  444 

Dettingen,  battle  of  (1743),  138-140 
Diet,  the,  its  origin  and  organisation, 
17  ff.  ;  supports  Maria  Theresa  in  175 7, 
203  ;  in  1801,  455  ;  after  1803,  465 
Diet  of  Cologne  (1512),  13 

of  Ratisbon  (1653),  14,  20 
of  Pressburg  (1687),  34 
Directorium  (Austria),  177 
Directory  (France),  established,  391  ; 
policy  towards  Austria  and  Prussia, 
392  ;  replaced  by  Consulate  (1799),  438 
Dissertatio  de  ratione  status  in  lmperio 
nostro  Romano  Germanico,  7 
Dohna,  Christopher  (Prussian  general), 
236-238,  242,  247,  252 
Domstadtl  Pass,  235 

Dornberg,  Major-General  von,  in  1815, 

66  7 

Dresden,  24 ;  occupied  by  Leopold  of 
Anhalt-Dessau  (1745),  162  >  Treaty  of, 
162;  occupied  by  Prussians  (1756), 
197  ;  captured  by  Imperial  Army, 
261,  274,  Napoleon  at  (1812), 

570;  captured  by  French  (1813),  582  ; 
battle  of  (1813),  608-61 1  ;  held  by 
St.  Cyr,  621-622  ;  falls,  632 
Drouet  (French  general)  at  Leipzig, 
624  ;  at  Hanau,  633 
Dubois,  Cardinal,  70 
Dumouriez,  Charles  Francis,  378  ;  at 
Valmy,  380 ;  invades  Holland,  383 ; 
deserts  to  Allies,  384 
Dunkirk,  English  attack  on  (1793),  385 
Duplat,  Colonel  (K.G.L.  Brigadier),  at 
Waterloo,  688,  692,  695 
Dtirrenstein,  battle  of  (1805),  488 
Dutch,  in  Austrian  Succession  War,  147, 
166-168  ;  war  with  Joseph  II,  3 1 7— 
318,  386;  disaffected  (1794),  390  ;  sub¬ 
mit  to  France  (1795),  391  (  =  Batavian 
Republic) 

Dutch-Belgian  troops  assist  French  (1809), 
534;  at  Leipzig,  630;  in  1815,  665 
n.  ;  at  Waterloo,  689-690  ;  at  Quatre 
Bras,  678-679 

East  Friesland,  1 1 3  ;  ceded  to  Plolland 
(1807),  517  ;  to  Hanover  (1815),  656 
Ebelsberg,  battle  of  (1890),  532 
Eberhard  ill  of  Wlirtemberg  (1623- 
1674),  49 


Eberhard  Louis  of  Wlirtemberg  (1677- 
1 733)>  49,  370 

Eckmuhl,  battle  of  (1809),  531-532 
Edict  of  Restitution,  6 
Elchingen,  battle  at  (1805),  486 
Electorate  of  Bohemia,  office  of  Arch 
Butler  attached  to,  18  ;  vote  in  abey¬ 
ance,  19 

Electorate  of  Brandenburg,  office  of 
Arch  Chamberlain  attached  to,  18 
Cf.  Ilohenzollern,  Prussia 
Electorate  of  Cologne,  office  of  Arch 
Chancellor  of  Italy  attached  to,  19  ; 
fate  in  1803,  462 

Electorate  of  Hanover,  created  in  1692, 
19 

Cf.  Brunswick-Luneburg,  Hanover 
Electorate  of  Mayence,  office  of  Arch 
Chancellor  of  Germany  attached  to, 
19  ;  its  traditional  policy ;  fate  in 
1803,  462  ;  464 

Electorate  of  Saxony,  office  of  Arch 
Marshal  attached  to,  18  ;  connection 
with  Corpus  Plvangelicorum ,  19 
Electorate  of  Treves,  office  of  Arch 
Chancellor  of  Burgundy  attached  to, 
19  ;  fate  in  1803,  462,  464 
Electors,  College  of,  18-20 
Elizabeth  of  Russia  (1740-1762),  150; 
treaty  with  George  11,  187  ;  joins 

Franco- Austrian  alliance,  191,  203, 
213,  228,  282;  death,  286,  291 
Elizabeth  Farnese  (Queen  of  Spain), 
75,  79,.  81,  98,  142 
“  Emancipating  Edict,”  561 
Emperor,  history  of  office,  powers  and 
position  in  1715,  9-10 

Cf.  also  Charles  VI,  Charles  vn, 
Francis  1,  Joseph  11,  Leopold  11, 
Francis  11 

Empire,  Holy  Roman,  condition  of  in 
1715,  2  ;  how  affected  by  Peace  of 
Westphalia,  4;  end  of  (1806),  498; 
proposals  for  reconstruction  (1814- 
1815),  Chapter  XXXIV.  passim 
Enghien,  Louis  Due  de  (ob.  1804), 
abducted  and  executed,  473 
Erfurt,  interview  of  (1808),  523-524 
Erlon,  Jean  Comte  de  (French  Marshal), 
in  Waterloo  campaign,  668  ;  on  June 
1 6th,  676 ff.,  680 

Ernestine  Saxons,  divisions  of,  53  ;  365, 

5IG 

Cf.  Saxe-Coburg,  Saxe-Gotha,  Saxe- 
Weimar 

Ernest  Augustus  of  Hanover,  19,  47 
Ernest  Louis,  Landgrave  of  Hesse- 
Darmstadt  (1678-1739),  51,  368 
Essling,  battle  of  (1809),  537  ff. 

Estrees,  Louis  Charles  de  (French 
general),  campaign  of  1757,  214 
Eugene  ;  cf.  Beauharnais 


716  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Eugene  of  Savoy,  Prince,  12;  in  the 
Turkish  War  (1715-1717),  72-75,  80, 
99;  campaign  of  1734,  100;  death, 
102 

Eugene  of  Wurtemberg,  Prince ;  in 
Prussian  service  (1806),  509  ;  in 

Russian  (1813),  610-612  ;  at  Leipzig, 
624  ff. 

Cf.  also  Frederick  Eugene  (Duke, 
1763-1795),  Prussian  general  in 
Seven  Years’  War 
Eylau,  battle  of  (1807),  514 

Febronius,  330 

Fehrbellin,  battle  of  (1675),  41 
Ferdinand  1  (Emperor),  112 
Ferdinand  11  (Emperor),  7,  114 
Ferdinand,  Archduke  (son  of  Maria 
Theresa),  marries  heiress  of  Modena, 
180,  409  ;  receives  the  Breisgau,  410, 
453>  459»  462  ;  dispossessed  (1805),  493 
Cf.  genealogy,  703 

Ferdinand,  Archduke  (son  of  Ferdinand 
of  Modena),  in  nominal  command 
(1805),  482,  486,  489  ;  539 
Ferdinand  of  Brunswick,  at  battle  of 
Prague,  207,  217,  221  ;  given  command 
in  Western  Germany  (1758),  230; 
campaign  of  1758,  230-232,  248-250; 
campaign  of  1 759>  265-272;  of  1760, 
280-281  ;  of  1761,  283-284;  of  1762, 
288-289  ;  death  (1792),  367 
Cf.  Brunswick  Genealogy,  7°4 
Ferdinand  VI, King  of  Spain  (1746-1759), 
165,  184;  death,  272 
Ferdinand  of  Tuscany  (second  son  of 
Leopold  11),  receives  Tuscany,  347  ; 
dispossessed  by  French,  423  ;  receives 
Salzburg,  453,  459  ;  transferred  to 

Wurzburg  (1805),  494,  510,  552  ;  re¬ 
gains  Tuscany,  656 

Fermor,  William  (Russian  general),  213  ; 
in  campaign  of  1758,  237-241  ;  super¬ 
seded,  253  ;  at  Kunersdorf,  256 
Fichte,  Johann  Gottlieb,  360,  523,  569 
Finck,  Frederick  Augustus  (Prussian 
general),  247  ;  at  Kunersdorf,  258, 
261  ;  at  Maxen  (1759),  263-264 
Firmian,  Charles,  180 
Firmian,  Leopold  von,  Archbishop  of 
Salzburg,  85 

Fleurus,  battle  of  (1794),  399 

Fleury,  Cardinal,  82,  96,  10 1,  104  ; 

policy  in  1740,  no,  123  ;  death,  134 
Fontenoy,  battle  of  (1745),  155 
Forster,  George,  362,  381 
Fouque,  Henry  Augustus  (Prussian 
general),  260,  273 
Fox,  Charles  James,  382,  503 
Foy,  Maximilian  (French  general),  on 
Quatre  Bras,  680 ;  at  Waterloo,  690, 
691  n. 


Francis  Stephen,  Duke  of  Lorraine,  101  ; 
campaign  of  1741,  126-127  ;  elected 
Emperor  as  Francis  1,  157,  182; 

death  and  character  ;  300,  707 
Francis  II  (Emperor,  1792-1835)  ; 
succeeds  Leopold  11,  377  ;  intervenes 
in  France,  379 ;  character,  402 ; 
accepts  Peace  of  Luneville,  456  ;  re¬ 
cognises  Napoleon  as  Emperor  and 
assumes  title  “Emperor  of  Austria,” 
47411.  ;  at  Austcrlitz,  490;  comes  to 
terms  with  Napoleon,  492,  515,  590; 
in  1814,  641  n. 

Francis  ill  of  Este,  Duke  of  Modena 
( 1 737_1 78 o),  142;  restored  to  domin¬ 
ions,  169;  governs  Lombardy,  180 
Francis  George  of  Schonborn,  Elector  of 
Treves  (1729-1756),  122,  167 
Francis  Louis  of  Neuburg,  Elector  of 
Treves  (1715-1729),  37,  81,  95; 

Elector  of  Mayence  (1729-1732), 
7o 7 

Frankenberg,  Count  (Archbishop  of 
Malines),  340 

Frankfort,  Grand  Duchy  of,  created  for 
Dalberg  (1803),  463,  552-553;  con¬ 
tingent  in  Spain,  552  n.  and  553  n., 
635>. 64 7  ;  suppressed.  (1815),  656 
Frankfort  am  Main,  given  to  Dalberg, 
520  ;  fate  in  1815,  651 
Frankfort,  proposals  of  (1813),  635 
Union  of  (1744),  149 
Frankfort  on  Oder,  taken  by  Russians 
(1759),  254 

Frederick  1  of  Hesse-Cassel  (Landgrave, 

1 730-1 751),  succeeds  to  Sweden 
(1720),  70  ;  joins  Union  of  Frankfurt, 

^  150,  368 

Frederick  11  of  Hesse-Cassel  (1760-1785), 
321,  368 

Frederick  IV  of  PIolstein-Gottorp  (ob. 

„  O03),  56 

Frederick,  Duke  of  Mecklenburg  - 
Schwerin  (1756-1785),  204 
Frederick  v,  Elector  Palatine,  5,  6,  84 
Frederick  1  of  Prussia,  19,  41  ;  dies 
(1713),  66  ;  85 

Frederick  11  of  Prussia  (1740-1786),  94  ; 
action  in  1740,  99,  1 1 5  ;  seizes  Herstal, 
in;  his  claim  on  Silesia,  1 1 2  ff.  ; 
in  the  first  Silesian  War,  1 16-131  ; 
makes  Convention  of  Klein  Schellen- 
dorf,  126;  breaks  it,  128;  makes 
Peace  of  Berlin,  1 3 1  ;  organises  Union 
of  Frankfort  (1744),  149;  in  Second 
Silesian  War,  150-161  ;  makes  Peace 
of  Dresden,  162,  187  ;  treaty  with 
George  II,  188-190  ;  responsibility  for 
Seven  Years’  War,  192;  reforms  duiing 
peace,  194-195  ;  campaign  of  1756, 
196-200  ;  of  1757,  204-212,  218-227  ; 
of  1758,233-248;  of  1759,  252-265; 


INDEX 


of  1760,273-279;  of  1761,  281-283; 
of  1762,  287-288;  position  in  1763, 
291  ;  reforms,  etc.,  after  war,  294-298  ; 
policy  towards  Poland,  303-309 ;  in¬ 
terference  in  Bavarian  Succession, 

3 1 2-3 14;  forms  Fiirstenbund  (1786), 
320;  death  of  (1786)  and  character, 
322,  359 

Cf.  Hohenzollern  genealogy,  705 
Frederick,  Duke  of  Wurtemberg  ( 1 797— 
1816),  becomes  Elector  (1803)  462; 
469  ;  joins  Napoleon  (1805),  483  ; 
becomes  King  (as  Frederick  1),  494; 
joins  Confederation  of  Rhine,  497  ;  the 
maker  of  Wurtemberg,  550-551  ; 
deserts  Napoleon,  631 
Frederick  Charles,  Elector  of  Saxony 
(1763,  Oct. -Dec.),  303 
Frederick  Eugene  of  Wurtemberg 
(Duke,  1795-1797),  serves  as  Prussian 
general  in  Seven  Years’  War,  225-226, 
277-278,  283  ;  404 

Frederick  William,  Elector  of  Branden¬ 
burg,  his  relations  with  Louis  xiv, 
26  ;  with  Leopold  I,  27  ;  his  character 
and  work,  40-41,  112 
Frederick  William  1  of  Prussia  (1713- 
1740),  succeeds,  66  ;  takes  part  in  the 
Northern  War, Chapter  III. ;  guarantees 
Pragmatic  Sanction,  81  ;  protects  Pro¬ 
testants,  85  ;  military  and  domestic 
reforms,  86-93  5  foreign  policy,  95-96, 
99  ;  death,  104;  564  ;  705 
Frederick  William  II  of  Prussia  ;  succes¬ 
sion  of,  1786,  322;  character,  323; 
intervenes  in  Holland  (1787),  325  ; 
foreign  policy,  345,  348  ;  relations  with 
Austria,  354 ;  attitude  to  French 
Revolution,  356  fif. ,  375,  377  5  Second 
Partition  of  Poland,  382  ;  slackness  in 
opposing  France,  383-390  ;  makes 
peace  (1795),  392;  Third  Partition, 
396-397  ;  Prussia  under  his  rule,  414- 
416  ;  death  (1797),  416  ;  705 
Frederick  William  ill  of  Prussia ; 
succession  (1797)  and  character,  416; 
continues  neutral,  417  ;  abstention  from 
Second  Coalition,  424,  437-438,  470  ; 
attitude  to  France  ( 1803-1804),  476  ff.  ; 
is  offered  Hanover,  479 ;  roused  by 
Napoleon’s  violation  of  Prussian 
neutrality,  489 ;  signs  Convention  of 
Potsdam,  489  ;  character,  500  ;  breach 
with  Napoleon  (1806),  503-504,  513, 
515,  52S ;  share  in  Stein’s  reforms, 
559;  attitude  in  1813,  571,  573,  577, 
591,  610,  643  ;  designs  on  Saxony, 
653-655:  gains  in  1815,  655;  705 
Frederick  William,  Duke  of  Brunswick- 
Wolfenbiittel ;  receives  Oels,  534  ;  his 
rising,  534~535  5  restored,  631  ;  killed 
at  Quatre  Bras,  689  ;  704 


717 

Free  Cities,  College  of,  21-23  1  in  r792> 
363>  373  5  fate  of,  in  1803,  460 
Freiberg,  battle  of  (1762),  288 
Freiburg  in  Breisgau,  siege  of  (1744), 

French  Revolution,  becomes  a  European 
concern,  356  ;  influence  on  Germany, 
358-363 

Friedland,  battle  of  (1807),  516 
Fulda,  given  to  William  v  of  Holland, 
463  ;  confiscated,  51 1  ;  given  to 
Dalberg,  519  ;  552,  656 
Fiirstenbund  ( 1786),  320,  473,  475 

Gadebusch,  battle  of  (1712),  65 
Gages  (Spanish  general),  143,  164 
Gahmig,  Prince  Henry  at  (1758),  236 
Galicia,  claimed  by  Austria,  307  ;  under 
Austrian  rule,  309  ;  divided  (1809), 
545  ;  restored  to  Austria,  655 
Galitzin,  Alexander  (Russian  general), 
256 

General  Directory  (Prussia),  87  ff.,  296, 
416,  559. 

Genoa,  joins  Bourbons  (1745),  164; 

Massena’s  defence  of  (1S00),  441-442 
Gentz,  Frederick  von,  481  ;  at  Congress 
of  Vienna,  648 

George  William  of  Luneburg-Celle,  46 
George  Lewis  of  Hanover  (George  1  of 
England),  his  succession  to  Hanover, 
47  ;  to  England,  19  ;  share  in  Northern 
War,  Chapter  III.  ;  refuses  Alberoni’s 
offers,  75 

George  11  of  England,  82 ;  policy  in 
1741,  1 17,  124,  126,  137  ;  in  campaign 
of  1743,  138-141,  159,  184;  relations 
with  Austria,  185-187  ;  treaty  with 
Prussia,  189;  denounces  Convention 
of  Closter  Seven,  216-217 ;  treaty 
with  Prussia  (1758),  229 
George  ill  of  England,  286,  321,  470 
Gerard,  Etienne,  Comte  de  (French 
Marshal),  in  Waterloo  campaign,  668, 
669 ;  at  Ligny,  673-678  ;  with 
Grouchy,  684-685 

Germanic  Confederation,  established  by 
Congress  of  Vienna,  651-652 
“German  League  Corps”  (1814),  636; 
in  1815,  662  n. 

Girard,  Jean,  Baron  (French  general), 
601  ;  defeated  at  Hagelberg,  605  ;  at 
Ligny,  672-677 
Girondins,  376,  384 

Glatz,  ceded  to  Prussia,  162  ;  taken  by 
Loudoun  (1760),  274;  given  up  to 
Prussia,  289 

Gneisenau,  Count  Augustus  (Prussian 
general),  defends  Colberg  (1807),  514, 
559,  564,  568,  607,  622,  635,  640; 
plan  of  campaign  (1815),  663,  678  ; 
responsible  for  retreat  to  Wavre,  683, 


7i8  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


for  lateness  of  Prussians  at  Waterloo, 

684  -  685  ;  pursuit  after  Waterloo, 
967 

Goethe,  Johann  von,  360;  at  Wiemar 
(1808),  365,  523,  570 
Gohrde,  action  at  the  (1813),  619 
Golymin,  battle  of  (1806),  513 
Gortschakov,  Prince  Peter  (Russian 
general),  at  Leipzig,  626-630 
Gortz  (Swedish  minister),  66,  70 
Gottorp  ;  vide  Holstein 
Graham,  Sir  Thomas,  636,  661 
Granby,  Marquis  of,  280,  284,  2 88 
Grand  Army  of  1812,  Germans  in,  568,570 
Grand  Army  of  1813,  574— 576  ;  Germans 
in,  576  n.  and  596  n.,  616,  617 
Gross  Beeren,  Oudinot  defeated  at  (1813), 
604-605 

Gross,  Gorschen  (  =  Lutzen),  battle  of 
(1813),  581-582 

Grouchy,  Emmanuel,  Marshal,  450 ;  in 
1815,  Chapter  XXXV.  passim ,  esp. 
681-682  (his  pursuit  of  Bliicher),  684- 

685  (conduct  on  June  1 8th),  698-699 
(battle  of  Wavre  and  retreat) 

Guard,  Napoleon’s,  at  Dresden,  609-610; 
at  Leipzig,  624-630  ;  at  Ligny,  675- 
677  ;  at  Marengo,  443  ;  602  ;  at  Water¬ 
loo,  691  n.,  694-696 
Guastalla,  battle  of  (1734),  101 
Gustavus  ill  of  Sweden,  326,  357 
Gustavus  IV  of  Sweden,  keenly  hostile 
to  France,  478,  520 
Gute  alte  Recht ,  das,  49,  55° 

Halberstadt,  Bishopric  of,  passes  to 
Bradenburg,  21 

Halkett,  Colin  (British  brigadier),  at 
Waterloo,  688,  689,  695 
Halkett,  William  (Hanoverian  brigadier), 
at  Waterloo,  688,  692,  695 
Hanau,  battle  of  (1813),  633 
Hanover  (cf.  Brunswick-Luneburg), 
raised  to  Electorate,  19,  27,  45,  47  ; 
its  territories,  etc.,  in  1715,  47-48  ; 
troops  of,  at  Dettingen,  137-140,  147  ; 
at  Fontenoy,  156,  167-168 ;  attitude 
in  1756,  201  ;  troops  of,  in  Seven 
Years’  War,  Chapters  XI. -XIII. 
passi?n,  esp.  204,  214-216,  268-269, 
288  ;  condition  in  1792,  366;  troops  of, 
in  India  and  at  Gibraltar,  366,  in 
Netherlands  (1793-1795),  387  ff.  ;  ac¬ 
cepts  Peace  of  Basle,  392,  464  ; 

occupied  by  French  (1803),  470-472  ; 
offered  to  Prussia,  479  ;  occupied  by 
Prussia,  489  ;  given  to  Prussia  at 
Schonbriinn,  493,  499 ;  offered  to 
England,  500,  503;  partitioned,  5 1 8  ; 
arrangements  as  to  1813,  574,  617, 
647,  651  ;  extent,  etc.,  in  1815,  65 5— 
656;  contingent  of,  in  1815,  661, 


656  n.  ;  at  Quatre  Bras,  678-679 ;  at 
Waterloo,  688-696  ;  losses,  697 
Hanover,  Convention  of  (1745),  160 
Hanseatic  League,  decline  of,  22,  373, 
457;  fate  of,  in  1807,  518,  558,  568, 
590.  651 

Harcourt,  Comte  de  (French  general), 
129,  132 

Hardenberg,  Prince  Charles  Augustus 
(Prussian  minister),  negotiates  Peace  of 
Basle,  392  ;  suspicions  of  France,  401, 
463  ;  in  charge  of  foreign  affairs  (1804), 
477 ;  anxious  to  get  Planover,  478  ; 
out  of  office,  500;  “First  Cabinet 
Minister,”  51 1  ;  dismissed,  518,  528, 
559  ;  his  reforms,  562-563  ;  urges  war 
(1813),  573,  5 77,  643  ;  at  Congress  of 
Vienna,  648-659 

Harrach,  Toseph  (Austrian  minister), 
108,  174,  301 

Harsch  (Austrian  general),  234  ;  besieges 
Neisse  (1578),  243,  247 
Hastenbeck,  battle  of  (1757),  214 
IPatzfeldt,  Charles  (Austrian  minister), 
173  ;  Hofkanzler(  1771),  301,  327,  333 
Haugwitz,  Christian  Henry  (Prussian 
minister),  favours  peace  with  France, 
386,  416,  417,  419,  424;  changing 
policy,  438 ;  favours  France,  476 ; 
losing  ground,  477  ;  sent  with  ulti¬ 
matum  to  Napoleon,  490  ;  signs  Treaty 
of  Schonbriinn  (1805),  493  ;  action 
criticised,  499  ;  again  in  office,  500, 
503  ;  retires,  510 

Haugwitz,  Frederick  William  (Austrian 
minister),  173, 174,  176,  299;  death,  301 
Heilsberg,  battle  of  (1807),  516 
Ilenckel  (Prussian  general)  in  Waterloo 
campaign,  672-675 

Henry  of  Prussia,  Prince,  1 95  ;  at  battle 
of  Prague,  207 ;  at  Rossbach,  222, 
234,  236,  243,  246,  254,  260-263,  273- 
279,  287-288,  306,  386,  417,  cf. 

705 

Herrnhausen,  League  of  (1725),  79,  81  ; 

project  of  (1755),  187 
Hersfeld,  Bishopric  of,  passes  to  Hesse- 
Cassel,  21,  50 

Herstal,  seized  by  Frederick  II,  ill 
Hertzberg,  Count  Frederick  (Prussian 
minister),  320,  323,  325-326,  345; 
treaty  with  Poland  (1790),  348,  354 
Hesse-Cassel,  extent  of,  50 ;  troops  of,  in 
British  pay  (1743-1748),  138-140, 
14711.,  167,  168;  (1756-1762),  204, 
216,  231,  249,  269  ;  for  neutrality  in 
1757,  203  ;  during  Seven  Years’  War, 
Chapters  XI. -XIII.  passim  ;  joins 
Furstenbund ,  321  ;  in  1792,  368  ;  hires 
troops  to  England  (1777-1782),  368- 
369,  (I793-I795).  388;  makes  peace 
with  France,  395  ;  gains  and  losses  in 


INDEX 


719 


1803,  462  ;  becomes  Electorate,  463, 
504;  confiscated  by  Napoleon,  518; 
part  of  Kingdom  of  Westphalia,  518  ; 
risings  in  (1809),  533  ff.  ;  old  govern¬ 
ment  restored,  631  ;  assists  Allies 
(1814),  636,  651,  656;  in  1815,  662  n. 

Cf.  Charles  I,  Frederick  1  and  11, 
William  vi,  vm,  ix 

Hesse-Darmstadt,  extent  of,  etc.,  50; 
accedes  to  Treaty  of  Ftissen,  154; 
supports  Maria  Theresa  in  1757)  203, 
321;  condition  in  1792,  368;  gains 
and  losses  in  1803,  462;  neutral  in 
1805,  483  ;  joins  Confederation  of  the 
Rhine,  497  ;  sends  contingent  to  Spain, 
522  n.  ;  to  Russia,  568,  552;  con¬ 
tribution  to  Napoleon’s  army  (1813), 
596  n.  ;  deserts  Napoleon  (1813),  631  ; 
assists  Allies  (1814),  636,  651,  656  ;  in 
1S15,  662  n. 

Cf.  Ernest  Louis  (1678-1739), 
Louis  vm  (1739-1768),  Louis  ix 
(1768-1790),  Louis  x  (1790-1830) 
Hildesheim,  Bishopric  of,  48 ;  annexed 
by  Prussia,  464 

Hill,  General  Lord,  in  Waterloo 
campaign,  665  fif. 

Hiller,  Johann,  Baron  von  (Austrian 
general),  campaign  of  1809,  531-544 
Hiller  (Prussian  general),  at  Waterloo, 
693-696 

Hippolytus  a  Lapide  =  Ph.  Boguslaw 
Chemnitz,  7 

Hoche,  Lazare  (French  general),  387, 
40911.,  421 

Hochkirch,  battle  of  (1758),  243 
Hofer,  Andreas,  545 
Hofgericht ,  16,  302 

Hofkammer  (Austrian  Treasury),  35,  7$, 
107,  1 77 

Hofkriegsrath ,  78,  283  n. 

Hohenfriedberg,  battle  of  ( 1  745)j  r57 
Hohenlinden,  battle  of  (1800),  449-451 
Hohenlohe,  Frederick  Louis,  Prince  of 
(Prussian  general),  502  ;  campaign  of 
Jena,  505-510 

Ilohenzollern,  family  of,  genealogy,  705 
Cf.  Anspach,  Baireuth,  Brandenburg, 
Prussia 

PIobenzollern-Hechingen,  497,  651 
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen,  497,  651 
Holland,  adheres  to  League  of  Herrn- 
hausen,  81;  attitude  in  1759,  204; 
conflict  with  Joseph  11,  317-318; 

troubles  in  (1787-1788),  325;  con¬ 
quered  by  French  (1795),  39°  >  becomes 
Batavian  Republic,  391  ;  Anglo- 
Russian  expedition  to  (1799),  435, 
437  5  obtains  E.  Frisia,  517 
Holstein  (cf.  Schleswig-Holstein),  54-56, 
316 ;  exchanged  against  Oldenburg, 
369  *,651,  657 


Cf.  Adolphus  Frederick,  Charles  iv, 
Charles  Frederick,  Paul  of  Russia 
Holstein-Eutin,  Christian  Augustus  of, 
56,  66 

Holstein-Eutin,  Frederick  Augustus  of, 
becomes  Duke  of  Oldenburg  (1773- 

1785),  369 

Holstein-Eutin,  Peter  Frederick  Louis  ; 
Regent  of  Oldenburg  (g.v.),  369,  569 
Peter  Frederick  William,  Duke  of 
Oldenburg  (1785-1823),  369,  566 
Hotze,  Frederick  (Austrian  general), 
427-430  ;  killed,  437 
Houchard,  Jean  Nicolas  (French 
general),  386 

Hulsen  (Prussian  general),  210-21 1; 
277-279 

Humbolt,  William  von,  Minister  of 
Public  Instruction,  Prussia,  founds 
University  of  Berlin,  563,  570 ;  at 
Congress  of  Vienna,  648-659,  esp.  652 
Hungary,  connection  with  Austria,  31, 
33  ;  supports  Maria  Theresa,  125,  15 1  ; 
condition  of,  under  Maria  Theresa,  180- 
182;  discontent  in,  325,  327,  334, 
343-345  ;  Leopold  i’s  settlement,  349, 
540 

Illyrian  provinces,  545,  590  ;  restored  to 
Austria  (1815),  657 

Imhoff  ( Hanoverian  general),  249,266, 280 
Imperial  Army,  its  composition  and 
condition  in  1715,  10-12  ;  in  the  Ross- 
bach  campaign,  21 7,  221-222;  in 
1758,  236;  in  1759,  252;  captures 
Dresden  (1759),  261  ;  at  Maxen,  263  ; 
in  1760,  277-278  ;  288 
Imperial  Chamber  (cf.  Kanmergericht  or 
Reich sham  merger ich t ) ,  464 
Imperial  Court  (cf.  Hofgericht ) 

Imperial  deputation,  13 
Imperial  Knights,  their  position,  59, 
374;  escape  suppression  in  1803,  459, 
464;  treatment  of  (1803-1805)5467- 
468  ;  mediatised,  494,  496 
Imperial  revenue,  13,  59 
“  Inn-Viertel,”  ceded  to  Austria  (1779), 
314;  transferred  to  Bavaria  (1809), 
544  ;  restored  to  Austria  (1815),  701 
Italy,  Kingdom  of,  479  ;  receives  Venice 
and  Dalmatia,  493  ;  receives  South 
Tyrol,  545 

Jaegerndorf,  Prussian  claim  on,  114 
Jagow  (Prussian  general),  at  Ligny, 
672-679 

Jellachich,  Baron  Francis  von  (Austrian 
general),  486-487,  539 
Tena,  University  of,  365  ;  battle  of 
(1806),  507-508 

Jerome  Bonaparte  (King  of  Westphalia), 
513,  535,  555-558,  635 


720  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Jesuits,  331 

John,  Archduke  (sixth  son  of  Leopold 
11 ),  commands  at  Hohenlinden,  449- 
451;  in  Tyrol  (1805),  487;  bellicose 
(1809),  528;  campaign  of  1809,  535— 
544 ;  beaten  at  Raab,  540 ;  too  late 
at  Wagram,  543  ;  resigns,  544  ;  atti¬ 
tude  in  1813,  578,  645  ;  703 
John  George  11  of  Saxony  (ob.  1656), 
his  disposition  of  his  territories,  39,  113 
John  Frederick,  Duke  of  Hanover,  25 
John  William  of  Neuburg,  Elector 
Palatine  (1690-1716),  his  policy,  44- 
45  ;  persecutes  Protestants,  85  ;  707 
Joseph  1,  death  of,  a  turning  point  in 
German  history,  1,  30;  and  Hungary, 
34 

Joseph  11  (Emperor  1765-1790),  178, 
182  ;  election  as  King  of  the  Romans, 
184,  185,  202,  290;  elected,  299; 

becomes  Emperor,  300 ;  inaugui'ates 
reforms,  301-302  ;  share  in  Partition 
of  Poland,  305-309  ;  foreign  policy  of, 
Chapter  XV.  (cf.  Bavaria,  Netherlands, 
Catharine  11) ;  death  and  character, 
327,  346 ;  ecclesiastical  policy,  328- 
334;  educational  policy,  33I~332  5 
legal  reforms,  334  ;  agrarian  reforms, 
334-336 ;  and  his  ministers,  338 ; 
economic  policy,  339 ;  provokes  in¬ 
surrection  in  Netherlands,  340-343  ; 
and  Hungary,  343-345 
Joseph  of  Austria  (fifth  son  of  Leopold 
11),  Archduke,  544,  703 
Joseph  Bonaparte,  448  ;  King  of  Naples, 
503  ;  of  Spain,  528 
Joseph  of  Sulzbach,  95,  707 
Joseph  Clement  of  Bavaria,  Elector  of 
Cologne  (1688-1723),  37-38,  cf.  707 
Joubert,  Barthelemy  (French  general), 
409  ;  killed  at  Novi  (1799),  435 
Jourdan,  Jean  Baptiste,  Marshal,  wins 
Fleurus  (1794),  389,  39°,  399,  401  ; 
campaign  of  1796,  402-407;  of  1799, 
426-428 

Joyetise  Entrte,  179,  342 
Julich  (cf.  Berg),  45,  81,  94 ff.,  128; 
annexed  to  France,  460 ;  to  Prussia 
(1815),  655 

Jiirgass  (Prussian  general),  at  Ligny, 
672-677 

Kalisch,  Treaty  of  (1813),  574,  647  ; 
Convention  of,  577 

Kalckreuth,  Count  (Prussian  general), 
,513,  517 

Kammergericht  (Imperial  Chamber  of 
Justice),  8;  how  supported,  13;  its 
composition  and  history,  14,  302,  320, 
464 

Kanimerzieler  (=  Chamber  Terms),  13 
Kanitz  (Prussian  general),  240 


Kant,  Immanuel,  360 
Ivatzbach,  battle  of  the  (1813),  606-608 
Kaunitz,  Wenceslaus  Anthony,  Count, 
169,  172-173;  foreign  policy,  180, 
182-184  ;  becomes  Chancellor,  184  ; 
renews  project  for  French  alliance, 
190,  229,  283  n. ,  285,  299;  share  in 
Partition  of  Poland,  304-309  ;  opposes 
overtures  to  Prussia,  323,  326  ;  ecclesi¬ 
astical  policy,  332,  341  ;  hostile  to 
Prussia,  354;  resigns  (1793),  413 
Keith,  James  Francis  Edward  (Prussian 
Marshal),  198,  206,  209,  235  ;  killed 
at  Hochkirch  (1758),  245 
Kellermann,  Francis  Christopher,  Due 
de  Valmy  (French  Marshal),  at  Valmy, 
380 

Kellermann,  Francis  Stephen  (French 
general),  at  Marengo,  444  ;  in  1813, 
602,  623  ;  in  1815,  679 
Kempt,  Sir  John,  at  Quatre  Bras,  678  ; 

at  Waterloo,  691 
Kesselsdorf,  battle  of  (1745),  16 1 
Khevenhiiller,  Louis  (Austrian  general), 
10 1,  103  ;  campaign  in  Bavaria  (1741- 
1742),  127  ff.,  177 

Kielmansegge  (Hanoverian  general),  at 
Quatre  Bras,  679  ;  at  Waterloo,  688- 
689 

Ivienmayer,  Baron  Michael  (Austrian 
Marshal),  at  Hohenlinden,  450  ;  488- 
489  ;  at  Austerlitz,  491 
“  King’s  German  Legion,”  formation  of 
(1803),  472  ;  522  n.,  583,  605  ;  in  1815, 
Chapter  XXXV.  passhn ,  esp.  661, 
665  n.  ;  at  Waterloo,  688 
Kinsky,  Philip  (Chancellor  of  Bohemia), 
108,  172 

Klein  Schellendorf,  Convention  of 
(1741),  126;  denounced  by  Frederick, 
128 

Kleist,  Emilius  Friederich  (Prussian 
general),  in  autumn  campaign  of 
1813,  597-633,  esp.  612 
Kleist,  Heinrich  von  (poet),  570 
Kleist  (Prussian  general),  260 
Klenau,  Johann  (Austrian  general),  435, 
449,  45i;  at  Wagram,  541-543;  in 
1813,  61 1,  624-628 

Knesebeck,  von  (Prussian  Marshal),  592, 
635,  662  n.,  700 

Knyphausen,  Henry  (Prussian  minister), 

,  x95 

Kolafat,  battle  of  (1790),  349 
Kolin,  battle  of  (1757),  210-21 1 
Kolowrat,  Leopold  (Austrian  minister), 
301  (Chancellor),  338 
Kolowrat  (Austrian  general),  in  1809, 

537,  539,  542 
Koniggratz,  235 

Konigsegg  (Austrian  general),  100,  103, 
180,  182 


INDEX 


721 


Konigsegg  (Austrian  general),  the 
younger,  205,  206 

Korsakov,  Michaelovitch  (Russian 
^  general),  432,  435-437 
Kosciuzsko,  Thaddeus  (Polish  patriot), 
,  396 

Krafft  (Prussian  general),  at  Ligny, 
672-677 

Krasinski,  Marshal  (Poland),  304 
Kray,  Baron  Paul  (Austrian  general), 
402,  426,  428,  435  ;  campaign  of  1800, 
441,  442,  445-447 

Kruse,  Colonel  (Nassau),  681  n.,  689 
Kulm,  battle  of  (1813),  611-613;  its 
effects,  614 

Kunersdorf,  battle  of  (1759),  225-259 
Kurakin,  Count  (Russian  minister),  459, 

5l6 

Kutusov,  Prince  Michael  (Russian 
general),  campaign  of  1805,  487- 
496,  571 

Lacy,  Count  Joseph  Maurice  (Austrian 
general),  at  Lobositz,  198  ;  at  Hoch- 
kirch,  245  ;  plan  for  1760,  273  ;  cam¬ 
paign  of  1760,  274-279,  287  ;  President 
of  War  Council,  1765-1774,  301,327, 
428 

La  Fere  Champenoise,  battle  of  (1814), 
640 

La  Have  Sainte  (cf.  Waterloo),  688, 
690-691 

Lambert,  Sir  John,  66511.  ;  at  Waterloo, 
691 

Landshut,  Fouque  defeated  at  (1760),  273 
Langen  (Prussian  general),  at  Ligny, 
675-677 

Langeron,  Count  (Russian  general),  593, 
597  ;  autumn  campaign  of  1813,  606- 
633,  esp.  Ivatzbach,  Leipzig  ;  of  1814, 
636-642 

Lannes,  Jean  (Franch  Marshal),  441, 
485,  491-492  ;  campaign  of  1806, 
505-510,  513;  campaign  of  1809, 
531-538 

Laon,  battle  of  (1814),  640 
La  Rothiere,  battle  of  (1814),  637 
Latour-Maubourg,  Marquis  de  (French 
general),  autumn  campaign  of  1813, 
602-633 

Lauffeldt,  battle  of  (1747),  168 
Lauriston,  Marquis  de  (French  Marshal), 
spring  campaign  of  1813,  580-588 ; 
autumn  campaign,  602-633 
League  of  the  Rhine  (1658),  25,  27 
League  of  Vienna  (1725),  79 
Leczinski,  Stanislaus,  64 ;  candidature 
for  Poland,  98  fif.  ;  receives  Lorraine, 
101 

Lefebvre,  Francis  Joseph  (French 
Marshal),  besieges  Dantzic,  514; 
commands  Bavarians  (1809),  529-544 

46 


Lehrbach,  Louis  Conrad  (Austrian 
minister),  429,  448 

Lehwaldt  (Prussian  general),  beaten  at 
Gross  Jaegerndorf  (1757),  213 
Leibnitz,  Gottfried  Wilhelm,  his  reply 
to  Pufendorf,  8  ;  his  Bedenken ,  25 
Leipzig,  battle  of  (1813),  623-629 
Leipzig,  city  of,  23,  654 
Leoben,  preliminaries  of  (1797),  409 
Leopold  II  (Emperor,  1790-1792), 
becomes  Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany 
( 1  7^5)j  3°°?  336;  succeeds  Joseph  11, 
347  ;  concludes  Treaty  of  Reichenbach, 
348-349  ;  settlement  of  Hungary,  349  ; 
suppresses  Belgian  insurrection,  350  ; 
reforms,  351-352;  attitude  to  French 
Revolution,  353  ;  makes  peace  with 
Turkey,  353 ;  negotiations  with 
Prussia,  354  ;  intervention  in  France, 
375-376  ;  death,  377  ;  703 
Leopold  of  Anhalt-Dessau,  Prince  (the 
elder),  68,  91,  117,  160-162 
Leopold  of  Anhalt-Dessau,  Prince  (the 
younger),  130 

Leopold  Joseph,  Duke  of  Lorraine  (1690- 
1729),  58 

Lestocq,  Anton  von  (Prussian  general), 
513-516 

Leuthen,  battle  of  (1757),  224-227 
Lichtenstein,  Prince,  544 
Liege,  Bishopric  of,  48,  in 

City  of,  taken  by  Saxe,  167 
insurrection  in  (1789),  356 
Liegnitz,  Prussian  claim  on,  112;  battle 
of  (1760),  275,  276 
Ligny,  battle  of  1815,  671-677 
Linz,  seized  by  Franco-Bavarians  (1741), 
124,  537  ;  see  of,  329 
Lippe,  Princes  of,  520,  651 
Lippe-Schaumburg  or  Lippe-Biickeburg, 
William  of,  371,  502 
Lobau,  Count  (French  general),  in 
Waterloo  campaign,  668,  677  ;  at 
Waterloo,  695,  696 
Lobau,  island  of,  537— 54 1 
Lobkowitz,  Count  (Austrian  general), 
130;  allows  Belleisle  to  escape  from 
Prague,  133  ;  in  Italy,  163 
Lobositz,  battle  of  (1756),  198 
Lombardy,  Austrian  rule  in,  142  n., 
300,  408 ;  ceded  to  France,  409 ; 
restored  to  Austria,  657 
Cf.  Milanese 

Lorraine,  58,  98 ;  ceded  to  Stanislaus 
Leczinski,  10 1,  360 

Lotliair  Francis  of  Schonborn,  Elector 
of  Mayence  (1693-1729),  37 
Loudoun,  Gideon  Ernest  (Austrian 
general),  at  siege  of  Olmtitz,  234-236  ; 
at  Hochkirch,  243-245  ;  in  campaign 
of  1759  (Kunersdorf),  254-259,  262  ; 
campaign  of  1760,  273-279;  takes 


722  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Schweidnitz  (1761),  283,  291,  313; 
campaign  of  1788  (Danube),  324;  of 
1789,  326;  death  (1790),  349 
Louis  of  Austria,  Archduke  (eleventh 
son  of  Leopold  11),  531  ;  703 
Louis  ix,  Landgrave  of  Hesse-Darmstadt 
(1768-1790),  368 

Louis  x,  Landgrave  of  Hesse-Darmstadt 
(1790-1830),  368,  483,  497;  faithful 
to  Napoleon,  552,  631,  651,  656 
Louis  xiv,  aggressions  against  Germany, 
2,  24  ;  and  the  League  of  the  Rhine 
(1658),  25;  and  Hungary,  33;  policy 
towards  Germany  compared  with 
Napoleon’s,  525 

Louis  XV,  98  ;  supports  Bavaria,  124, 
126,  148,  154 ;  supports  war  policy 
(1758),  228;  policy  towards  Poland, 
303 

Louis  xvi,  376,  378  ;  executed,  382 
Louis  of  Baden-Baden,  Margrave  ( 1677— 
1707),  12,  50 

Louis,  Dauphin,  born  (1729),  81 
Louis  Eugene,  Duke  of  Wurtemberg 
( 1 793— 1 795)>  371  n* 

Louis  Ferdinand  of  Prussia,  Prince, 
anti-French,  476  ;  leads  war  party, 
501,  504  ;  death,  506  ;  705 
Louis  George  of  Baden-Baden,  Margrave 
(1707-1761),  50,  370 
Louise,  Queen  of  Prussia,  hostile  to 
France,  476,  504,  517  ;  705 
Lowenwolde,  Treaty  of  (1732),  98 
Lucchesi  (Austrian  general),  207-224 
Lucchesini,  Jerome,  Marquis  de  (Prussia), 
348  ;  favours  peace  with  France,  386, 
47 1,  478,  503  . 

Luneville,  negotiations  at,  448 ;  peace 
of  (1801),  452-453 
Lutterberg,  battle  of  (1758),  250 
Liitzen,  battle  of  (1813),  581-582 
Liitzow’s  Free  Corps,  576,  588 
Luxemburg,  Grand  Duchy  of,  651,  656 

Macdonald,  Marshal  (French),  in  Italy 

(1799),  433-434  ;  in  1800,  449,  451  ; 
campaign  of  1809,  536-544  ;  campaign 
of  1812,  568,  572  ;  spring  campaign  of 
1813,  581-588  ;  autumn  campaign, 

602-633  (esp.  cf.  Katzbach)  ;  of  1814, 
637-642 

Mack,  Charles  (Austrian  general),  388  ; 
appointed  Quarter-Master  General, 
481  ;  in  campaign  of  1805,  482-486 
Magdeburg,  Bishopric  of,  passes  to 
Brandenburg,  21  ;  taken  from  Prussia 
(1807),  517  ;  restored  in  1815,  655 
Maillebois,  Marshal  (French),  124,  126, 
r32,  i64 

Maltzahn  (Prussian  minister),  195 
Mannstein  (Prussian  general),  at  Prague, 
207  ;  at  Kolin,  210-21 1 


Manteuffel  (Prussian  general),  240 
Mantua,  101,  402  ;  siege  of  (1796-1797), 
407-408  ;  taken  by  Austrians  (1799), 
434 

Marengo,  battle  of  (1800),  443-444 
Maria  Amelia,  Archduchess,  marries 
Charles  Albert  of  Bavaria,  79,109,  154  ; 
703,  707 

Maria  Anna,  Archduchess,  80,  173,  180; 

7<J3 

Maria  Josepha,  Archduchess,  marries 
Electoral  Prince  of  Saxony,  79,  109  ; 
703,  706 

Maria  Theresa,  45  ;  marriage  of,  101  ; 
succeeds  Charles  iv  (1740),  105  ;  and 
her  enemies,  Chapter  VII.  ;  in  the 
Austrian  Succession  War,  Chapter 
VIII.  and  IX.  ;  appeal  to  Plungarian 
loyalty,  125  ;  has  to  make  peace,  169  ; 
military  and  domestic  reforms,  174- 
182  ;  foreign  policy,  182-185  5  action 
in  1756,  195-196  ;  in  the  Seven  Years’ 
War,  Chapters  XI. -XIII.  ;  agrees  to 
peace  (1763),  289;  reforms,  etc.,  after 
the  war,  298-301  ;  policy  towards 
Poland,  304-309  ;  overruled  by  Joseph 
11,  310,  313;  death  (1780)  and 

character,  315,  317  ;  ecclesiastical 

policy,  329-330 

Cf.  Hapsburg  genealogy,  703 
Marie  Louise,  Archduchess,  marries 
Napoleon,  552;  566,  657  n.;  703 
Marmont,  August  (French  Marshal), 
444,  487,  488^  536  ;  spring  campaign  of 
1813,581-588,601 ;  autumn  campaign, 
601-633,  esp.  Dresden;  Leipzig,  of 
1814,  636-642 

Massena,  Andre  (French  Marshal),  401  ; 
in  Switzerland  (1799),  426-427,  431- 
437;  defence  of  Genoa  (1800),  440- 
442;  commands  in  Italy  (1805),  487  ; 
campaign  of  1809,  529-544 
Matthews  (English  admiral),  143,  146 
Maurice  of  Anhalt-Dessau  (Prussian 
general),  205,  210-21 1,  218,  225-226, 
240,  244-245 

Maurice  de  Saxe  (Marshal  Saxe),  127, 
147,  166-168,  223  ;  706 
Maxen,  Finck  capitulates  at  (1759), 
263-264 

Maximilian  1  (Emperor),  3,  14,  16 
Maximilian  11  (Emperor),  16 
Maximilian  of  Austria,  315,  320  ;  Elector 
of  Cologne  (1785-1801),  373,  400  n., 
448  ;  death  of,  458  ;  703 
Maximilian  of  Austria,  Archduke  (son  of 
Ferdinand  of  Modena),  535 
Maximilian  1  of  Bavaria  (1598-1651), 
his  character  and  achievements,  42-43 
Maximilian  Emanuel  of  Bavaria  (1679- 
1726),  his  policy  in  the  Spanish  Suc¬ 
cession  War,  19,  43,  83 


INDEX 


723 


Maximilian  Joseph  of  Bavaria  ( 1745— 
I777)>  x53;  makes  Peace  of  Ftissen, 
154  ;  supports  Austria  in  Seven  Years’ 
War,  203  ;  death  of,  310-311  ;  707 
Maximilian  Joseph  of  Zweibriicken, 
364,  409  n.  ;  becomes  Elector  of  Bavaria 
l1 799),  425  ;  supports  Second  Coalition, 
425,  439,  451,  456,  468-47°;  joins 
Napoleon  (1803),  483,  493;  becomes 
King,  494,  497,  520,  529,  549-55°, 
553,57°;  707 

Maximilian  of  Rottenfels,  Elector  of 
Cologne  (1761-1785),  315,  321 
Mayence,  city  of,  taken  by  French 
(1792),  381;  recovered  (1793),  385, 
387,  39°,  398  ;  siege  of,  raised  (1795), 
400;  Napoleon  at  (1804),  475;  a 
Federal  fortress  (1815),  656 
Mayence,  Electorate  of,  connection  with 
Arch  Chancellorship  of  Germany,  19; 
its  traditional  policy,  etc.,  36,  cf.  463  ; 
its  extent,  36,  48;  in  1792,  373,  454; 
fate  in  1803,  462,  464  ;  in  1815, 655-656 
Mayence,  Electors  of,  Lothair  Francis 
of  Schonborn  (1695-1729),  37 

Francis  Louis  of  Neubourg  (1729- 

1732),  83,  95  ;  7°7 

Philip  Charles  of  Eltz-Kempten 
(1732-1743),  122 

John  Frederick  of  Ostein  (1743- 
1763),  167 

Emeric  Joseph  of  Breidbach  (1763- 
1774) 

Frederick  Charles  Joseph  of  Erthal 
(1774-1803),  321,  357,  3 73,  436, 
456 

Cf.  Dalberg 

Mazarin,  Cardinal,  his  policy  towards 
Germany,  25,  455 

Mecklenburg,  divisions  of,  53  ;  affairs 
of,  69;  condition  of,  in  1792,  369; 
contingent  of,  in  Grand  Army  of  1812, 
568;  of  1813,  576  n.  ;  656;  667 
Mecklenburg-Schwerin,  Dukes  of : 

Charles  Leopold  of  (1713-1747),  54, 
69-70,  94 

Christian  Louis  of  (1747-1756),  84, 
94 

Frederick  of  (1756-1785),  204,  314 

Frederick  Francis  1  of  (1785-1837), 
369,  464  ;  joins  Confederation  of 
the  Rhine,  520,  568,  596,  651  ; 
becomes  Grand  Duke,  656 
Mecklenburg-Strelitz,  Dukes  of : 

Adolphus  Frederick  11  (1708-1749), 

54 

Charles  Louis  (1749-1752) 

Adolphus  Frederick  in  (1752-1794) 

Charles  (1794-1816),  369,  464  ;  joins 
Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  520, 
568,  596  n.,  651  ;  becomes  Grand 
Duke,  656 


“  Mediatisation,”  49S 
Melas,  Michel,  Baron  de  (Austrian 
general),  at  Novi,  435 ;  defeats 
Championnet,  437  ;  campaign  of  1800 
(Marengo),  44x~445 

Mentzel,  Frederick  William  (Saxony), 

187,  195 

Metternich,  Prince  Clement  Wenceslaus, 
at  Rastatt,  429  ;  advocates  peace,  544  ; 
becomes  Foreign  Minister,  544 ;  his 
internal  policy,  545,  552 ;  alliance 
with  Napoleon,  565-566 ;  attitude  in 

1813,  572,  578,  579,  587,  598; 

negotiates  Treaty  of  Toplitz,  618,  630, 
635  ;  not  revengeful,  643  ;  policy  in 

1814,  645  ft'.  ;  presides  over  Congress 
of  Vienna,  647 ;  champions  minor 
states,  652  ;  attitude  on  Saxon  question, 
653  ;  attitude  towards  Napoleon  in 

1815,  661  ;  fosters  Russo- Prussian 
disagreements,  700  ;  702 

Milan,  Duchy  of,  ceded  to  Austria 
( 1 7 1 5 ) 5  33;  l°st  at  Campo  Formio, 
410  ;  restored  to  Austria,  657 
Minden,  battle  of  (1759),  268-270 
Bishopric  of,  42,  655 
Mockern,  battle  of  (1813),  580 
Modena,  added  to  Cisalpine  Republic, 
453  ;  Hapsburgs  restored  in,  657 
Cf.  Francis  ill  of  Este  ;  Ferdinand 
Moldavia,  occupied  by  Russia,  306 ; 

restored  to  Turkey,  309 
Mollendorf,  Joachim  Henry  (Prussian 
general),  386,  415 ;  surrenders  at 
Weimar  (1806),  5°9 
Mollwitz,  battle  of  (1741),  11S 
Mompelgard  (Montbeliard),  21  ;  acquired 
by  Wiirtemberg  (1723),  49,  404  n.  ; 
lost  (1803),  460 

Montereau,  battle  of  (1814),  638 
Montgelas,  Count  Max  von  (Bavarian 
minister),  425,  469,  536,  549,  579; 
favours  neutrality,  618 
Montijo  (Spanish  Ambassador  at 
Dresden),  no 

Montmartin  (Wiirtemberg),  371 
Montmirail,  battle  of  (1814),  638 
Monzambano,  Severin  de,  cf.  Pufendorf 
Moreau,  Jean  Victor  (French  general), 
campaign  of  1796,  401-403;  of  1799, 
433  ;  of  1800,  440,  445-447  ;  victory 
at  Hohenlinden,  4^0 ;  joins  Allies 

(1813),  598 

Mors,  acquired  by  Brandenburg  (1702), 
42  ;  lost  to  France,  392,  463 
Mortier,  Edouard  (French  Marshal), 
invades  Hanover  (1803),  470,  473, 
488,  513,  610;  in  1814,  636-642 
Moys,  Winterfeldt  defeated  at  ( 1 757)> 
218 

Munchhausen,  Baron  Gerlach  Adolf 
von  (Hanoverian  minister),  187 


724  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Munchmayer,  Michael,  on  the  German 
Constitution,  28 
Munich,  Marshal  (Russia),  no 
“  Municipal  Reform  Edict,”  560 
Munster,  Bishopric  of,  48  ;  fate  in  1803, 
464;  in  1807,  519;  in  1815,  655 
Munster,  Count  von,  Hanoverian  re¬ 
presentative  at  Vienna,  648,  650 
Murat,  Joachim  (Marshal),  485,  586? 
490-492 ;  obtains  Grand  Duchy  of 
Berg,  496 ;  campaign  of  1806,  505- 
510;  of  1807,  514-5^,  553  5  trans¬ 
ferred  to  Naples  as  King,  555  5  5^8  ; 
at  Dresden,  610-61 1  ;  at  Leipzig,  622- 
626;  action  in  1815,  660;  beaten  at 
Tolentino,  701 

Nadasky,  Francis  Leopold  (Austrian 
general),  210-21 1,  218-220,  224 
Naples,  Kingdom  of,  ceded  to  Austria 
(1715),  33;  to  Don  Carlos,  101,  163; 
joins  Second  Coalition  (1798),  423,  503 
Cf.  Two  Sicilies,  Murat 
Napoleon,  influence  of  on  Germany,  362  ; 
Italian  campaign  of  1796,  401-402, 
407-408  ;  at  Leoben,  408  ;  returns  to 
France  (1799),  438;  campaign  of 
1800,  441-444  ;  imposes  conditions  on 
Austria,  452,  454 ;  policy  towards 
Germany,  1801-1803,  455-460 ;  true 
author  of  Third  Coalition,  465  and 
Chapter  XXIV.  passim ;  assumes 
Imperial  title,  474 ;  visits  Mayence 
(1804),  475  ;  moves  against  Austria, 
480;  campaign  of  1 805,  Chapter  XXV.  ; 
policy  of,  494-495  ;  forms  Confedera¬ 
tion  of  the  Rhine,  497-498  ;  offers 
Hanover  to  England,  503  ;  execution 
of  Palm,  504  ;  campaign  of  1806-1807, 
505-516;  makes  peace  of  Tilsit,  516- 
518;  creates  new  states  in  Germany, 
518-520;  starts  Continental  System, 
520 ;  relations  with  Alexander  1, 
521-524 ;  with  Austria,  521  ;  at 
Erfurt  (1808),  523;  policy  towards 
Germany,  525-526 ;  compared  with 
Louis  xiv,  526 ;  in  Spain,  528 ; 
campaign  of  1809,  530-543  ;  dictates 
Peace  of  Schonbrunn,  544-545  ; 
attitude  of  Germany  to,  547-549,  567  > 
changed  relations  with  Austria,  565- 
566  ;  quarrels  with  Russia,  566-568  ; 
efforts  of,  in  1813,  571,  574~576 ; 
spring  campaign  of  1813,  580-588; 
agrees  to  armistice,  5^7  5  his  error, 
588-589  ;  misled  by  Metternich,  589 ; 
preparations  for  autumn  campaign, 
595-596  ;  strategy  in  autumn  campaign, 
600-601,  cf.  615  ;  autumn  campaign, 
602  ff.  ;  position  at  end  of  August,  614  ; 
retires  from  Dresden,  621  ;  defeated 
at  Leipzig,  622-629 ;  retreats  to 


France,  630  and  632 ;  victory  of 
Hanau,  633  ;  campaign  of  1814,  634- 
642 ;  abdicates,  642 ;  escapes  from 
Elba  (1815),  660;  attitude  of  Powers 
towards  him,  661  ;  his  professions  and 
preparations,  663-665  ;  plan  of 
campaign  (1815),  664;  his  army,  667- 
668  ;  plan  on  June  16th,  671  (cf.  Ligny); 
delay  on  June  17th,  680,  cf.  682;  at 
Waterloo,  687-696 ;  abdicates,  699 

Narbonne,  Comte  Louis  de  (French  War 
Minister),  376 

Nassau,  in  1715,  59;  in  1792,  372  and 
n.  (  =  Orange-Nassau),  404,  460,  463, 
497)  656  ;  confiscated,  51 1  ;  contingent 
in  Spain,  522  n.  ;  assists  Napoleon 
(1809),  537  ;  restored,  631  ;  assists 
Allies,  636,  651,  655;  contingent  of, 
in  1815,  665  n.,  670  ;  at  Waterloo,  681, 
689 

Nassau-Dillenberg,  William  of,  elected 
Stadtholder  of  United  Provinces,  1747, 
168  ;  cf.  William  v 

Neerwinden,  Dumouriez  defeated  at 
(J793)>  384 

Neipperg,  William,  Marshal,  101  ; 
campaign  of  1741,  118-120,  126,  139, 
t 163,  177 

Neisse,  116;  surrenders  to  Frederick  11, 
126  ;  interview  between  Frederick  and 
J oseph  at  ( 1 769),  305  ;  besieged  ( 1 807 ), 

5*5  . 

Nemesis  Theresiana  (Austrian  Criminal 
Code),  178 

Nesselrode,  Charles  Robert  (Russian 
minister),  577;  at  Vienna  ( 1814),  648 

Netherlands,  36 ;  relations  to  Austria, 
105,  179-180,  201  ;  under  Joseph  11, 
317-318,  322  ;  troubles  in,  327.  342- 
343 ;  rebellion  suppressed,  350 ; 
conquered  by  French  (1794),  390; 
surrendered  by  Austria,  410,  453  ; 
Kingdom  of,  656;  its  troops  in  1815, 
662,  cf.  Dutch-Belgians 

Neuburg,  Philip  William  of,  cf.  Philip 
William,  Elector  Palatine 

Neuchatel,  acquired  by  Brandenburg 
(1707),  92 

Newcastle-under-Lyme,  Thomas,  first 
Duke  of,  191 

Ney,  Michel,  Marshal,  at  IPohenlinden, 
450-451  ;  campaign  of  1805,  485-496  ; 
of  1806,  506-510;  of  1807,  514-516; 
568;  spring  campaign  of  1813,580-588; 
autumn  campaign,  602-633,  esp.  6 1 5— 
616;  campaign  of  1814,  636-642;  in 
Waterloo  campaign,  670,  676-680 

Noailles,  Due  de,  134;  at  Dettingen, 
1 37- 1 40,  148 

Norris,  Admiral  Sir  John,  68,  146 

North,  Army  of  the  (1813),  597,  600; 
at  Gross  Beeren,  604-605  ;  at  Denne- 


INDEX  725 


vvitz,  615-616,622;  at  Leipzig,  626- 
629 

Novi,  battle  of  (1799),  435 
Nystadt,  Peace  of  (1721),  71 

Oldenburg,  connection  with  Denmark, 
56  ;  guaranteed  to  Holstein  family, 
316;  ceded  to  Frederick  Augustus  of 
IIolstein-Eutin  (1773),  369;  gains  in 
1803,  464 ;  annexed  by  Napoleon 
(1810),  518,  520,  558,  566,  651;  be¬ 
comes  Grand  Duchy,  656 
Olmiitz,  besieged  by  Frederick  11,  234; 
relieved,  236 

Olsuviev  (Russian  general),  638 
Olsuviev  (Russian  minister),  203 
Ompteda,  Colonel  von  (K.G.L. ),  at 
Waterloo,  688-689,  691 
Orange,  House  of,  59,  169,  463,  631, 
647 

Orange,  Prince  William  of,  in  1815, 
665,  669  ;  at  Waterloo,  688,  690-691 
Orsova,  ceded  to  Austria  (1791),  354 
Osnabriick,  Bishopric  of,  46,  48,  464  ; 
forms  part  of  Westphalian  kingdom, 
518  ;  restored  to  Hanover  (1815),  655 
Ostend  East  India  Company,  79-80 ; 
suppressed,  82,  185 

Ostend,  Wellington’s  base  in  1815,  665 
Ott,  Baron  von  (Austrian  general),  433- 
435>  441-444 

Otto,  Louis  (French  minister  at  Berlin), 
438 

Oubril,  Count  (Russian  Envoy  at  Paris), 
478 

Oudinot,  Charles  Nicolas,  Marshal,  436  ; 
campaign  of  1809,  529-544 ;  spring 
campaign  of  1813,  580-588;  autumn 
campaign,  600-633  (cf.  esp.  601  ; 
Gross  Beeren,  Dennewitz) ;  campaign 
of  1814,  636-642 

Pack,  Sir  Denis,  in  Waterloo  campaign, 
678 

Paderborn,  Bishopric  of,  48 ;  acquired 
by  Prussia  (1803),  464 
Pajol  (French  general),  in  Waterloo 
campaign,  666,  684 

Palm,  Johann  Philip,  execution  of,  504 
Paltzig,  battle  of  (1759),  253 
Panin,  Count  (Russian  minister),  313 
Pardo,  Convention  of  the,  81 
Paris,  surrenders  to  Allies  (1814),  642 
Treaty  of  (1814),  642 
Second  Treaty  of  (1815),  701 
occupied  by  Allies  (1815),  699 
Paris-Duverney  (French  minister),  202, 
213 

Parma  (see  also  Elizabeth  Farnese), 
passes  to  Don  Carlos  ;  battle  at 
(1734),  100;  restored  to  Austria,  ior  ; 
ceded  to  Don  Philip,  169;  annexed 


to  France,  479;  restored  to  Bourbons, 

657 

Passaro,  Cape,  battle  of  (1718),  77 
Passarowitz,  Peace  of  (1718),  75 
Patinol,  Don  Jose,  81 
Paul  1  of  Russia,  renounces  claim  on 
Holstein,  369  ;  joins  Second  Coalition, 
423-425  ;  withdraws  from  it,  438  ; 
supports  Napoleon,  452  ;  murdered 
(1801),  457 

Peace  of  Carlowitz  (1699),  73 
Passarowitz  (1718),  75 
Nystadt  (1720),  71 
Stockholm  (1720),  70 
Vienna  (1738),  101 
Belgrade  (1739),  103 
Berlin  (1742),  1 3 1 
Aix-la-Chapelle  (1748),  169 
Hubertsberg  (1763),  289 
Fontainebleau  (1763),  289 
Ivainardji  (1774),  309 
Tetschen  (1779),  313 
Sistova  (1791),  354 
Verela  (1792),  352 
Jassy  (1792),  354 
Basel  (1795),  392 
Cherasco  (1796),  402 
Luneville  (1801),  452 
Pressburg  (1805),  493 
Tilsit  (1807),  516-518 
Perponcher,  Count  William  (Dutch  - 
Belgian  general),  in  1815,  670,  678 
Peter  the  Great,  65-71 
Peter  in  of  Russia,  150,  213,  228,  282; 
succeeds,  286  ;  assists  Frederick,  286  ; 
deposed,  287,  291 

Peter  Frederick  Louis  of  Holstein-Eutin, 
Regent,  and  later  Duke  of  Oldenburg 
369,  566,  569 

Peterwardein,  battle  of  (1716),  73 
Pfaffenhofen,  Treaty  of  ( 1 79^)?  406-407 
Philip  v  of  Spain,  attacks  Sicily  and 
Sardinia,  75  ff.,  79;  guarantees  Prag¬ 
matic  Sanction,  So  ;  death  of  (1746), 
165 

Philip  Charles  of  Eltz-Ivempten,  Elector 
of  Mayence  (1734-1743),  122 
Philip,  Don  (son  of  Elizabeth  Farnese), 
142,  144,  145,  164;  obtains  Parma, 
169;  183 

Philip  William  of  Neuburg,  Elector 
Palatine  (1685-1690),  succeeds  to 
Palatinate,  19  ;  70 7 
Phull  (Prussian  general),  504 
Piccolomini  (Austrian  general),  197,  200 
Pichegru,  Charles  (French  general),  387, 
389,  39  L  399-400 

Picton,  Sir  Thomas,  in  Waterloo  cam¬ 
paign,  678-679,  690 

Piedmont,  annexed  to  France,  453  J 
Thugut’s  designs  on,  432 ;  attitude 

in  1799,  433 


726  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Fillnitz,  Declaration  of  (1791),  375 
Pirch  1  (Prussian  general),  in  1815,  at 
Ligny,  671-677,  686;  at  Waterloo, 

695  •  -o 

Pirch  11  (Prussian  general),  in  1815,  668, 
671-679 

Pirna,  Saxons  besieged  at,  197-200 
Pitt,  William  (Earl  of  Chatham),  186, 
204  ;  employs  British  troops  in 
Germany,  231  ;  falls,  286 
Pitt,  William,  foreign  policy,  325,  348, 
35°,  354,  376  ;  share  in  First  Coalition, 
384 ;  subsidy  treaties,  388,  393,  409, 
417,  467;  refuses  to  let  Russia  take 
Hanover,  489;  death  (1806),  500, 
503 

Pius  vi  (Pope),  330  ;  visits  Vienna, 
333>  423 

Planchenoit  (cf.  Waterloo),  693-696 
Poland,  connection  with  Saxony,  19 ; 
share  in  Northern  War  (1 700-1 721), 
Chapter  III.  ;  affairs  of,  303-309  ;  First 
Partition  (1773),  308  ;  Second  Partition 
( 1 793)>  382-383 ;  Third  Partition 

< 1 795)»  385>  396-397  ;  rally  to  Napo¬ 
leon,  514  ;  fate  of,  discussed  at  Vienna, 
652-655  ;  redistribution  of  (1815),  655 
Pomerania,  Western,  Southern  portion 
passes  to  Prussia  (1720),  70  ;  Swedish, 
520  n.  ;  ceded  to  Prussia  (1815),  655 
Poniatowski,  Prince  Joseph,  in  French 
service,  539 ;  autumn  campaign  of 
1813,  602-630 

Poniatowski,  Stanislaus,  elected  King 
of  Poland,  303  ;  304,  396 
Portland  Ministry  (1807-1809),  515 
Posen,  ceded  to  Prussia  (1773),  308,  655 
Potemkin,  Prince  Gregory  (Russia),  313 
Potsdam,  Convention  of  (1805),  489 
Pragmatic  Sanction,  issued  by  Charles 
vi,  79  ;  recognised  by  Philip  v,  So  ; 
guaranteed,  83  ;  the  Powers,  and  after 
Charles  Vi’s  death,  108-114,  162 
Prague,  taken  by  Franco-Bavarians 
(1741),  127;  retaken  by  Austrians, 

133  ;  taken  by  Frederick  11,  150  ; 

evacuated,  152  ;  battle  of  (1757), 
206-208  ;  besieged,  208-212  ;  Con¬ 
gress  of  (1813),  592-594 
Princes,  their  interests  as  affected  by  the 
Reformation,  4  ;  their  relations  with 
the  Imperial  Courts  of  Justice,  9 ; 
College  of,  20-21  ;  Ecclesiastical 
members  of,  48  ;  minor  lay  members, 
59  ;  escape  suppression,  460  ;  in  1803, 
465 

Protestantism,  its  political  importance, 
4  ;  persecution  of,  34,  85  ;  in  Austria, 
333  ;  in  majority  in  Diet,  465 
Prussia,  condition  of,  government,  etc., 
41-42,  86-93  5  share  in  Northern  War, 
66-71,  81  n.  ;  foreign  policy  of,  94- 


96 ;  in  Austrian  Succession  War, 
111-163  ;  170  ;  in  Seven  Years’  War, 
Chapters  XI. -XIII.,  294-298  ;  and 
Poland,  303-308  ;  opposes  Joseph  11 
over  Bavaria,  3 12-3 1 4  ;  forms  Fiirsten- 
bund,  319-320,  322  ;  intervenes  in  Hol¬ 
land,  324-326  ;  in  Hungary,  326,  345, 
348  ;  ineffective  part  in  First  Coalition, 
Chapter  XIX.,  esp.  390;  makes  peace 
at  Basel,  392-395  ;  under  Frederick 
William  11  and  ill,  414-416;  policy 
of  neutrality,  417,  424;  in  1799,  437- 
438  ;  joins  Armed  Neutrality  (1800), 
457,  458-459;  gains  in  1803,  460, 
463-464  ;  alarmed  by  French  occupa¬ 
tion  of  Hanover  (1803),  471-472; 
conduct  in  the  Austerlitz  campaign, 
489-492  ;  draws  back  after  Austerlitz, 
493  ;  quarrel  with  Napoleon,  499-500  ; 
embroiled  with  England,  500  ;  un¬ 
satisfactory  condition  of,  in  1805, 
500-502  ;  mistaken  strategy,  504  ; 
ministerial  changes,  51 1  ;  war  with 
Napoleon,  504-516  ;  losses  at  Tilsit, 
516-518;  Napoleon’s  harshness  to, 
521  ;  has  to  accept  Convention  of 
Sept.  1808,  522 ;  inaction  in  1809, 
534,  544  ;  reforms  of  Stein  and  others, 
558-565 ;  assists  Napoleon  against 
Russia,  565  ;  anti-Napoleonic  move¬ 
ment  (1813),  572-573  ;  declares  against 
Napoleon,  574  ;  anxious  for  revenge, 
635,  643 ;  views  on  reconstruction, 
647-650  ;  designs  on  Saxony,  652- 
655  ;  attitude  towards  Napoleon  in 
1815,661 ;  bitterness  of,  against  France, 
699  ;  isolation  of,  701  ;  cf.  Frederick 
William  1,  11  and  ill ;  Frederick  1 
and  11 ;  Stein,  Ilardenberg,  etc. 

Prussian  Army,  reformed  by  Frederick 
William  1,  90-93  ;  condition  in  1756, 
194  ;  in  Seven  Years’  War,  Chapters 
XI. -XIII.  ;  (esp.  224,  241  n.,242,  252) ; 
after  the  war,  294,  298  ;  in  1792, 
379,  415  ;  collapse  foretold,  424  ; 

condition  in  1805,  501-502  ;  collapse 
in  Jena  campaign,  505-5 11  ;  reformed 
by  Scharnhorst,  563-565  ;  in  1813, 
576  ff.  ;  in  1814,  636-640;  in  1815, 
661-662  ;  at  Ligny,  672-677  ;  retreat 
to  Wavre,  682-683  5  late  arrival  at 
Waterloo,  684-685  ;  share  in  Waterloo, 
692-696  ;  losses,  697 

Pufendorf  (  =  Severin  de  Monzambano), 
his  views  on  the  German  constitution, 
8,  499 

Pultowa,  battle  of  (1709),  64 

Pultusk,  battle  of  (1806),  513 

Quadruple  Alliance  (1718),  76 

Quatre  Bras,  669 ;  skirmish  at,  670 ; 
battle  of,  678-680 


INDEX 


727 


Raab,  battle  of  (1809),  540 
Radetzky,  Joseph,  444  n.  ;  Austrian  Chief 
of  Staff  (1813),  592,  635 
Radom,  Confederation  of  (1767),  304 
Rapp,  Jean,  Comte  de  (French  general), 
at  Dantzic  (1813),  5S0 ;  in  1815,  699 
Rastatt,  Congress  of  (179S-1799),  418- 
420,  429  ;  envoys  murdered  at,  430 
Ratisbon,  Truce  of  (1684),  26,  112 
Reformation,  effect  of,  on  Holy  Roman 
Empire,  2 ;  effect  of,  on  German 
Kingdom,  3 

Reichenbach,  Congress  of  (1790),  348; 
Treaty  of,  349 

Reichsarmee.  See  Imperial  Army 
Reichshofrath  (“Aulic  Council”),  8; 

its  origin  and  position,  15,  302 
Reichskammergericht ,  16,  302 
Reille,  Andre  Charles,  Count  (French 
general),  in  Waterloo  campaign,  688  ; 
at  Quatre  Bras,  678-679,  681  ;  at 
Waterloo,  690 
“  Reserved  Rights,”  9 
Retzow  (Prussian  general),  225-226,  243 
Reuss,  Princes  of,  59,  372,  461,  520,  651 
Reynier,  Claude  (French  general),  beaten 
at  Maida,  503  ;  spring  campaign  of 
1813,  58 1— 58S  ;  autumn  campaign, 

600-633 

Cf.  Gross  Beeren,  Dennewitz,  Leipzig 
Rhine,  Confederation  of  (1806-1815) 

Cf.  Confederation  of  the  Rhine 
Rhine  League  of  1658 

Cf.  League  of  the  Rhine 
Rhinelands,  attitude  of,  in  1792,  361- 
362  ;  annexed  to  France,  410,  454  ; 
fate  in  1815,  654  ft'.  ;  attitude  to 

Napoleon,  662 

Richelieu,  Louis  Armand,  Due  de, 
campaign  of  1757,215-217;  recalled, 
232,  360 

Ripperda,  Baron  Willem  von  (Spain), 
79  ;  dismissed,  81 
Robinson,  Sir  Thomas,  122 
Rocket  Troop,  R.A.,  with  Wallmoden, 
605  ;  present  at  Leipzig,  629 
“Roman  Months,”  10 
Rossbach,  battle  of  (1757),  221-222 
Rottweil,  seat  of  Hofgericht ,  16 
Roucoux,  battle  of  (1746),  167 
Rouille  (French  minister),  192,  201 
Riichel,  Ernst  Friedrich  von  (Prussian 
general),  504-510,  51 1,  518 
Rumanjev,  Count  Peter  (Russian 
general),  238,  242,  256 
Rumbold,  Sir  George,  seizure  of,  477 
Russia,  in  Northern  War,  Chapter  III.  ; 
joins  League  of  Vienna  (1725),  81  ; 
guarantees  Pragmatic  Sanction,  83  ;  in 
Polish  Succession  War,  98  ft.  ;  calls  for 
Austrian  help  against  Turkey,  102  ;  in 
1740,  110;  concludes  treaty  of  War¬ 


saw,  154,  155,  160;  169;  treaty  with 
George  11  (1755),  187  ;  with  Maria 
Theresa,  19 1,  203  ;  in  Seven  Years’ 
War,  Chapters  XI. -XIII.  passim , 
esp.  213,  237-242,  251,  253-262, 

273,  275>  277 ,  281-283  ;  changes  of 
government  in  (1762),  286-287,  291  ; 
share  in  First  Partition  of  Poland, 
303~3°9  ;  negotiates  reace  of  Tetschen, 
313  ;  alliance  with  Joseph  II,  315-316, 
319,  322-326,  348,  353-354  ;  con¬ 
nection  with  Oldenburg,  369 ;  share 
in  Second  Partition  of  Poland,  382- 
383 ;  share  in  Third  Partition,  396- 
397;  hostile  to  France  (1798),  422; 
joins  Second  Coalition,  423-438  (cf. 
Suvorov)  ;  withdraws,  438,  452  ;  forms 
Armed  Neutrality  (1800),  457  ;  and 
the  reconstruction  of  1803,  458-459  ; 
alarmed  by  Napoleon,  474 ;  alliance 
with  Austria  (1804),  478;  with  Great 
Britain,  478 ;  in  campaign  of  1805, 
Chapter  XXV.  ;  assists  Prussia  (1806- 
1807),  513-516  ;  makes  peace  at  Tilsit, 
516  ;  receives  Old  Galicia,  545  ;  quarrel 
with  Napoleon,  565-566,  568  ;  assumes 
offensive  in  1813,  571-573  ;  in  War  of 
Liberation,  Chapters  XXX. -XXXII. 
passim ,  esp.  576,  594,  641  ;  gains  in 
1815,  647,  653,  655  ;  648;  action  in 
1815,  660,  662,  7QO 
Russo-German  Legion  (1813),  583 
Rutowski, Count  (Saxon  general),  126,  160 
Ryssel  (Prussian  general),  at  Waterloo, 
693-696 

“  Ryswick  Clause,”  the,  44,  102 

Sacilio,  battle  of  (1809),  535 
Sacken,  Count  (Russian  general),  593, 
597  ;  autumn  campaign  of,  1813,  602- 
633  (esp.  Ivatzbach,  Leipzig) ;  in  1814, 
636,  638-640 

Sackville,  Lord  George,  in  campaign  of 
1759,  266-268 

St.  Amand,  St.  Arnand  la  Ilaye,  Hameau 
St.  Amand  ;  cf.  Ligny 
St.  Cyr,  Gouvion  (French  Marshal),  in 
1800,  445-446;  in  autumn  campaign 
of  1813,  602-633 

St.  Germain,  Count  (French  General), 
at  Rossbach,  221-222,  232 
St.  Germain-en-Laye,  Peace  of  (1679),  41 
Salabert  (of  Zweibriichen)  surrenders 
Mannheim  (1795),  40011. 

Salzburg,  Archbishopric  of,  extent  of, 
48  ;  persecution  of  Protestants  in,  85  ; 
promised  to  Austria  ( 1 797 )»  411; 

transferred  to  Archduke  Ferdinand, 
453-459;  becomes  Electorate  (1803), 
464;  transferred  to  Austria  (1805), 
494;  to  Bavaria  (1809),  544;  restored 
to  Austria  (1815),  657  n. 


728  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Sardinia,  overrun  by  Spaniards,  7 6 ; 
exchanged  for  Sicily,  77 

Cf.  Charles  Emmanuel,  Piedmont 
Savoy,  Prince  Eugene  of.  See  Eugene 
Saxony,  connection  with  Poland,  19 ; 
policy  of,  1690-1693,  26  ;  its  territories 
and  condition  in  1715,  38-40;  share 
in  Northern  War,  Chapter  III.  ;  in 
Austrian  Succession  War,  Chapters 
VIII.-IX.  ;  in  Seven  Years’  War, 
Chapters  XI. -XII. ;  attitude  to  Prussia, 
299  ;  condition  in  1763,  303  ;  in  1792, 
365  ;  conduct  in  1796,  404,  464  ;  sup¬ 
ports  Prussia  in  1806,  505  ;  detached 
by  Napoleon  and  joins  Confederation 
of  Rhine  as  a  Kingdom,  510;  obtains 
Cottbus,  517  ;  assists  Napoleon  (1809), 
529-544  ;  development  of,  550  ;  con¬ 
tingent  in  1812,  568  ;  attitude  in  1813, 
579 ;  decides  for  Napoleon,  583  ; 
contribution  to  his  army  (1813),  596  n.  ; 
Saxon  troops  in  1813  at  Gross  Beeren, 
604-605 ;  at  Dennewitz,  616 ;  their 
defection  at  Leipzig,  628  ;  treatment 
of,  in  1813,  631  ;  fate  of,  discussed  at 
Vienna,  647,  652-655  ;  joins  Coalition 
1815,  660,  666  ;  cf.  Augustus  Frederick 
1,  11  and  hi,  John  George  11  :  cf.Wettin 
genealogy,  706 

Saxe-Coburg,  53,  510,  651,  656 
Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld,  Josias  of  (Austrian 
^  general),  324,  326,  383 
Saxe-PIildburghausen,  53,  651 

Prince  Ernest  Frederick  of,  com¬ 
mands  Imperial  Army  at  Rossbach, 
217,  221-222 

Saxe,  Maurice  de,  cf.  Maurice 
Saxe-Meiningen,  53,  651 
Saxe- Merseburg,  39,  365 
Saxe-Teschen,  Albert  of,  182,  338,  343, 
379-381,  389  ;  706 

Saxe-Weimar,  53,  365-366  ;  joins  Con¬ 
federation  of  the  Rhine,  51 1,  651  ; 
becomes  Grand  Duchy,  656 
Cf.  Charles  Augustus,  Duke  of 
Bernhard,  Prince  of,  in  1815,  670  n., 
689 

Saxe-Weissenfels,  39,  365 
Saxe-Zeitz,  39,  365 

Scharnhorst,  Gebhard  von  (Prussian 
general),  372,  502,  528,  559;  re¬ 
forms  Prussian  army,  563-565  ;  in 
^  1813,  576-577  ;  death,  592 
Scheldt,  opening  of  the,  317 
Scherer,  Barthelemi  (French  general), 
426  ;  superseded,  433 
Schill,  Ferdinand  von,  his  rising  (1809), 
533-534  . 

Schiller,  Friedrich,  360,  365 
Schleswig,  ceded  to  Denmark  (1721), 
70,  657 
Cf.  Holstein 


Schleswig-Holstein,  affairs  of,  54-56 
Cf.  Holstein 

Schmidt,  von  (Bavaria),  at  Vienna,  648 
Schulenberg,  John  Matthias,  defends 
Corfu,  72 

Schwabisch-Hall,  compact  of  (1685),  45 
Schwarzenberg,  Prince  Charles  Philip, 
481,  566,  572,  579,  592  ;  chosen  as 
Commander-in-Chief  (1813),  598  ;  his 
character  and  achievements,  598  ; 
autumn  campaign  of  1813,  599-633 
(esp.  609) ;  decides  to  invade  France, 
636;  plan  of  campaign,  1814,  636; 
invasion  of  France,  637-642;  in  1815, 
662  and  n.,  699 

Schwedt,  Convention  of(i7i3),  67 
Schweidnitz,  captured  by  Nadasky  (1758), 
219  ;  retaken  by  Prussians,  233  ;  taken 
by  Loudoun,  283  ;  retaken  (1762),  288  ; 
Allies  retire  on  (1813),  586 
Schwerin,  Christopher,  Marshal 
(Prussian),  1 1 6  ;  at  Mollwitz,  1 19  ;  in 
1756,  196,  200;  in  1757,  204-207; 
killed  at  Prague,  207 
Schwiebus  ;  ceded  to  Brandenburg,  27, 
4L  113 

Sebastiani,  Frangois  (French  general), 
in  autumn  campaign  of  1813,  602- 
633,  esp.  Ivatzbach 

Seckendorff,  Count  Frederick  Henry, 
81  ;  fails  against  Turks,  103  ;  in 
Bavarian  service,  132  ;  makes  Conven¬ 
tion  of  Rain  (1743),  136,  1 5 1,  152 
Segur,  Comte  de  (French  general),  127, 

I5I>  i54 

Selim  hi,  Sultan  (1789-1807),  326 
Senfift,  Baron  (Saxon  Foreign  Minister), 

551 

Serbelloni  (Austrian  general),  205-206, 
283,  287 

Servia,  acquired  by  Austria  (1718),  75; 

lost  (1739),  103  ;  invaded  (1788),  324 
Serurier,  Comte  de  (French  general),  433 
Sesia,  battle  on  the  (1733),  100 
Seven  Years’  War,  Chapters  XI. -XIII.  ; 

summary  of  results,  290-293 
Seydlitz,  Frederick  William  (Prussian 
general),  at  Rossbach,  222 ;  at 
Zorndorf,  240 

Sicily,  transferred  from  Savoy  to  Austria, 
77  ;  transferred  to  Don  Carlos,  101,  503 
Silesia,  31  ;  Prussian  claim  on,  112-115  ; 
invaded  by  Frederick  11,  n6ff.  ;  ceded 
to  Frederick  (Klein  Schellendorf),  126, 
13 1  ;  invaded  by  Austrians,  152,  157  — 
158;  guaranteed  to  Frederick  by 
George  11  (1745),  160;  definitely 

ceded  by  Austria,  162  ;  during  Seven 
Years’  War,  Chapters  XI. -XIII. 
passim ,  esp.  220 ;  left  to  Prussia 
(1763),  290,  305  ;  left  to  Prussia  (1807), 

I  517,  574 


INDEX 


729 


Silesia,  Army  of  (1813),  597  ;  autumn 
campaign  of  1813,  602-633,  esp.  606- 
608,  620-621,  625 

Sinzendorff,  Philip  Louis,  Chancellor  of 
Austria,  108,  1 1 7,  172 
Sistova,  Congress  of  (1790),  349,  353  ; 

Peace  of  (1791),  354 
Sohr,  battle  of  (1745),  159 
Soissons,  Congress  of,  81 

Blucher’s  danger  at  (1814),  639 
Soltikov,  Peter  (Russian  general),  cam¬ 
paign  of  1759,  253-262;  of  1760, 
275,  277,  291 
Sombreffe,  672  ff. 

Sondershausen,  battle  of  (1758),  249 
Sophia  Dorothea  of  Luneburg-Celle,  46, 
7°4 

Soubise,  Prince  de  (French  general), 
campaign  of,  1757,  217-218,  221-222  ; 
campaign  of  1758,  249-250;  of  1761, 
284  ;  of  1762,  288 

Souham,  Joseph  (French  general),  in 
autumn  campaign  of  1813,  602-633  ; 
esp.  Katzbach 

Soult,  Nicholas  Jean  (French  Marshal), 
427,  437,  485,  488,  491-492,  506-510, 
513  ;  sent  off  to  Spain  (1813),  594 
Spain,  Napoleon’s  intervention  in,  520  ; 

German  troops  in,  522  n.,  552  n.,  557  n. 
Speyer,  Armistice  of  (1801),  452 
Stadion,  Count  Philip  Charles,  Austrian 
minister  at  Berlin,  457  ;  negotiates 
Austro-Russian  defensive  alliance,  478  ; 
498,  515;  leads  opposition  to  Napoleon, 
Chapter  XXVIII.,  esp.  526;  resigns, 
544 ;  545,  587,  645 

Stahremberg,  Count  George  Adam, 
succeeds  Kaunitz  at  Paris,  190 ; 
negotiates  Second  Treaty  of  Versailles, 
201-212,  285,  340 

Stahremberg,  Gundacker,  81,  108,  117, 
172 

Stair,  John,  second  Earl  of,  136-140 
Stanhope-Sunderland  Ministry  (England), 
fall  of  (1721),  71 

Stanhope,  William  (Lord  Harrington),  82 
Steenbock,  Magnus  (Swedish  general), 

65  ff. 

Stein,  Henry  Frederick  Charles, 
Freiherr  von,  early  career  of,  501  ; 
anti  -  French,  504;  in  office,  51 1  ; 
retires,  51 1;  restored  to  office,  5 1 8  ; 
desires  alliance  with  Austria,  528  ;  his 
reforms,  558-562  ;  569,  577,  618,  643  ; 
ideas  for  reconstructing  Germany,  644  ; 
at  Vienna,  648,  650 

Steinmetz  (Prussian  general),  in  1815, 
^  669,  670  ;  at  Ligny,  673-677 
Stettin,  lost  to  Sweden  (1713),  67  ; 
surrenders  (1806),  510;  garrisoned  by 
French,  522  ;  in  1813,  600  ;  falls,  632 
Stockach,  battle  of  (1799),  427 


Stockholm,  Peace  of  (1719),  70 
Stralsund,  capitulation  of  (1715),  68  ; 
restored  to  Sweden,  70;  Schill  at 
(1809),  534;  ceded  to  Prussia  (1815), 

655 

Strassburg  seized  by  Louis  xiv  (1681),  24 
Stuart,  Prince  Charles  IMward,  156,  162 
Stulpnagel  (Prussian  general),  at  Ligny, 
677 

Suhlingen,  Convention  of  (1803),  471 
Sulzbach  branch  of  Wittelsbachs,  acquire 
Jiilich  and  Berg,  45  ;  52  ;  95 
Cf.  genealogy,  707 
Sundgau  ceded  to  France  (1648),  31 
Suvorov,  Peter  Alexis  (Austrian  general), 
takes  Oczakov,  326  ;  suppresses  Poles 
( 1 792),  383  ;  captures  Warsaw  (1794), 
397  ;  Italian  campaign  of  (1799),  428- 
429,  433-435  ;  move  into  Switzerland, 
432-4 33,  435-437 

Sweden,  has  seat  in  College  of  Princes, 
21  ;  territories  in  Germany,  57  ; 
assailed  by  coalition,  Chapter  III.  ; 
joins  coalition  against  Prussia  (1757), 
203  ;  ineffective  operations,  213  ; 
withdraws  from  war  (1762),  286  ;  action 
in  1804-6,478,  490,  502,  515;  520; 
joins  Allies  against  Napoleon  (1813), 
591  ;  loses  Pomerania,  657 

Cf.  Gustavus  hi  and  iv,  also 
Bernadotte,  Charles  xn 
Switzerland,  interference  of  French  in, 
421-422 ;  strategical  importance  of, 
426  ;  Allies  move  through  (1813-1814), 
636-637 

Talleyrand- Perigord,  Charles  Maurice  de, 
378,  424,  471  ;  proposed  policy  of, 
494,  500 ;  influences  Alexander  1, 
643  ;  at  Congress  of  Vienna,  648-659, 
esp.  653 

Tauentzien,  Count  Boguslav  (Prussian 
general),  506-510;  autumn  campaign 
of  1813,  597-633>.esp.  5^5*  6o4>  622 
Tauroggen,  Convention  of  (1812),  572 
Temesvar,  taken  by  Eugene,  73 
Theodore  of  Sulzbach  (1708-1732),  52, 
95  5  707 

Thielmann,  John  Adolphus,  General, 
commands  Saxon  army,  599  ;  com¬ 
mands  a  corps  in  1 8 1 5,  Chapter  XXXV. 
passim ,  esp.  666,  669,  683 ;  left  at 
Wavre,  685  ;  battle  of  Wavre,  698- 
699 

Thugut,  Francis,  Baron  von,  Austrian 
minister  at  Constantinople,  305,  313, 
377  ;  becomes  Chief  Minister,  385, 
388 ;  joins  in  Third  Partition  of 
Poland,  396,  398,  400  n.  ;  quarrels  with 
Clerfayt,  400-401,  407  ;  opposes  peace, 
408-410;  policy  and  character  of, 
4 1 3-4 1 4,  419;  designs  on  Bavaria, 


730  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


420,  439,  461  ;  422  ;  425  ;  429  ;  designs 
on  Piedmont,  430,  432  ;  444  n.  ;  dis¬ 
missed  (1800),  44S  ;  478,  545,  645 
Thurn  und  Taxis,  Princes  of,  59,  461, 
mediatised,  498 

Tilsit,  Peace  of  (1807),  negotiated,  516; 
terms  of,  517-518 

Tippelskirch  (Prussian  general),  at 
Ligny,  674-677 

Toll,  Charles  Ferdinand  (Russian 
general),  592  ;  advocates  direct  move 
on  Paris  (1814),  641 
Toplitz,  Treaty  of  (1813),  617,  646 
Torgau,  battle  of  (1760),  278-279 
Torring,  Count  (Bavarian  general),  125, 
128 

Tournay  besieged  (1745),  155 
Townshend,  Charles,  second  Viscount, 
82,  94 

Trachenberg,  Compact  of  (1813),  593  ; 
criticised,  594 

Transylvania,  34 ;  troubles  in,  344  ; 

separated  from  Plungary,  350 
Traun,  Otto,  Marshal,  125 ;  Italian 
campaigns  of,  142- 143  ;  campaign  of 
1744,  148-152,  177 

Trautmansdorf,  Count  (Governor  of 
Netherlands),  341 
Treaties  of  the  Crown  (1701),  19 
of  Westminster  (1716),  75 
of  London  (1720).  77 
of  Wtisterhausen  (1726),  81 
of  Vienna  (1731),  82 
of  Lowenwolde  (1732),  98 
of  Turin  (1733), 
of  the  Escurial  (1733),  98 
of  Nymphenburg  (1741),  121 
of  Breslau  (1741),  123 
of  Worms  (1743),  141,  143 
of  Fontainebleau  (1743),  145 
of  Fiissen  (1745),  J54 
of  Warsaw  (1745),  154 
of  Dresden  (1745),  162 
of  Aranjuez  (1752),  182 
of  Hamburg  (1762),  286 
of  Fontainebleau  (1785),  322 
of  Reichenbach  (1790),  349 
of  Pfaffenhofen  (1796),  349 
of  Campo  Formio  (1797),  410 
of  Ettlingen  (1805),  483 
of  Schonbrunn  (1805),  493 
of  Schonbrunn  (1809),  545 
of  Kalisch  (1813),  574,  646 
of  Toplitz  ( 1813),  617,  646 
of  Ried  (1813),  32,  619,  647 
of  Fulda  (1813),  631 
of  Kiel  (1814),  632 
of  Chaumont  (1814),  641,  646 
of  Paris  (1814),  641,  646 
of  Paris  (1815),  701 

Trebbia,  Suvorov’s  victory  on  the  (1799), 
434 


Trent,  Bishopric  of,  48;  annexed  to 
Austria,  453 

Treves,  Electorate  of,  connection  with 
Arch  Chancellorship  of  Burgundy,  19  ; 
its  extent,  etc.,  37,  48  ;  occupied  by 
French  (1734),  100;  restored,  101  ; 
taken  by  French  (1794),  390  ;  annexed 
to  France,  Chapter  XXIII.  ;  passes  to 
Prussia  (1815),  655 
Electors  of : 

CharlesofLorraine(i 71 1-1716),  37 
Francis  Louis  of  Neuburg  (1716- 
_  1729),  37,  81,  95 
Francis  George  of  Schonborn 
(1729-1756),  83,  122,  197 
John  Philip  of  Walderdorft  (1756- 
1768) 

Clement  Wenceslaus  of  Saxony 
(1768-1803),  357,  373,  421 
Trieste,  development  of,  80,  339  ;  ceded 
France  (1809),  544;  recovered  by 

Austria  (1815),  657 
Triple  Alliance  (1788),  325 
Tugendbund ,  the,  569 
Turkey,  war  with  Austria  and  Venice, 
Chapter  IV.  ;  with  Austria  and  Russia 
(I735-I739),  102-103 ;  at  war  with 
Russia  (1768-1773),  304-309;  relations 
with  Russia,  316  ;  war  with  Austria  and 
Russia  (1787-1791),  324-326,  347-349 
Tyrol,  32,  334,  351  ;  handed  oyer  to 
Bavaria  (1805),  493 ;  insurrection  in 
(1809),  536  ;  subdued  and  partitioned, 
545  ;  restored  to  Austria,  657 

Ulefeld,  Count  (Austrian  Chancellor),  172 
Ulm,  Kray  at  (1800),  447;  Mack 

capitulates  at,  485-486 
Ulrica  Eleanora,  Queen  of  Sweden  (17  iS— 
1741),  70 

Utrecht,  Peace  of,  turning  point  in 
German  history,  1 
Uxbridge,  Lord,  at  Waterloo,  689 

Valmy,  battle  of  (1792),  380 
Vandamme,  Count  Dominique  (French 
general),  commands  Wtirtemberg  con¬ 
tingent  (1809),  529-544;  spring 

campaign  of  1813,  583-588  ;  autumn 
campaign,  602-614,  esp.  Kulm  ;  in 
Waterloo  campaign,  668,  672-677, 
684-685 

Van  der  Noot  (Belgium),  342,  350 
Veldenz,  52 

Vellinghausen,  battle  of  (1761),  284 
Venice,  war  with  Turkey,  Chapter  IV.  ; 
partitioned  ( 1 797  )j  4 10  ;  transferred  to 
Kingdom  of  Italy,  493  ;  annexed  to 
Austria  (1815),  657 
Verden,  21,  68 

Vergennes,  Charles,  Comte  de,  185, 
hostile  to  Hapsburgs,  312;  supports 


INDEX 


73i 


Dutch  against  Joseph  11,  317  ;  death, 

325. 

Vergniaud,  Pierre  (France),  376 
Versailles,  First  Treaty  of  (1756),  191, 
200  ;  Second  (1757),  201-203 
Victor,  Claude,  Due  de  Belluno  (French 
Marshal),  autumn  campaign  of  1S13, 
601-633 

Vienna,  in  1715?  24  ;  League  of,  82; 
Treaty  of  (1731),  82;  Peace  of, 
(1738),  101  ;  see  of,  330;  under 
Leopold  I,  352  ;  occupied  by  Napoleon 
(1805),  488  (1809),  535  ;  Congress  of ; 
(1814-1815),  646-659 
Vimiero,  battle  of  (1808),  521,  522 
Vincke,  General  (Hanoverian  brigadier), 
at  Waterloo,  688,  695 
Vittoria,  battle  of  (1813),  effect  of,  594 
Vivian,  Sir  Hussey,  General,  at 

Waterloo,  689,  695,  696 
Vonck  (Belgium),  342,  350 
Voss,  Christian  Daniel,  645 

Wagram,  battle  of  (1809),  541-543 
Waitz  (minister  of  Hesse  Cassel),  475 
Walcheren,  English  expedition  to  (1809), 
544 

Waldemiihlen,  70 
Wallenstein,  Albert  von,  6 
Wallmoden,  Louis  George,  Count 
(Hanoverian),  391  ;  concludes  Con¬ 
vention  of  Suhlingen  (1803),  472  ;  in 
1813,  583,  597,  601,  605  ;  action  at 
the  Gohrde,  619,  632 
Walpole,  Sir  Robert,  71,  82;  policy  in 
1 733>  99;  fall  of,  1 31,  137 
Warburg,  battle  of  (1762),  288 
Warsaw,  Grand  Duchy  of,  created 
(1807),  517,  529,  544  ;  connection  with 
Saxony,  550,  618  ;  fate  in  1815,  653 
Wartensleben  (Austrian  general),  402-407 
Washington,  George,  185 
Wedel,  Charles  Henry  (Prussian  general), 
at  Rossbach,  225-226 ;  beaten  at 
Paltzig  (1759),  253,  254  ff. 

Wellington,  Duke  of,  victory  at  Vittoria, 
594  ;  invades  France  (1813),  634,  636  ; 
at  Congress  of  Vienna,  648  ;  campaign 
of  1815,  Chapter  XXXV.  passim,  esp. 
his  strategy,  669  ;  his  army,  665  and 
n.,  also  681  ;  criticises  Blucher’s  dis¬ 
positions,  673  ;  at  Quatre  Bras,  678- 
680  ;  retires  to  Waterloo,  6S1  ;  expects 
Prussians  early  on  June  18th,  686  ;  at 
Waterloo,  687-696  ;  treatment  of 
France,  699 

Werneck  (Austrian  general),  486 
Westminster,  Convention  of  (1756),  189 
Westphalia,  Kingdom  of,  created  (1807) 
for  Jerome  Bonaparte,  518;  sends 
contingent  to  Spain,  522  n.,  557  n.; 
risings  in  (1809),  533-535;  develop¬ 


ment  of,  555-558  ;  contingent  to  Grand 
Army  (1812),  568  ;  of  1S13,  596,  647  ; 
greater  part  given  to  Prussia  (1815), 

655 

Westphalia,  Peace  of,  a  turning  point 
in  German  history  :  its  results,  Chapter 
I.  passim. 

West  Prussia,  95  ;  acquired  by  Frederick 
n  (1773),  305-308;  517,  655 
Wettin,  family  of,  genealogy,  706 

Cf.  Saxony,  Saxe-Coburg,  Gotha, 
Weimar 

Wilhelmina  of  Prussia  (sister  of  Frederick 
William  11),  325,  705 
William  vi,  Landgrave  of  Hesse-Cassel 
(1637-1663),  50 

William  vm,  Landgrave  of  Hesse-Cassel 
(1751-1760),  for  neutrality  in  175 7, 
203  ;  hires  troops  to  George  11,  368 
William  ix,  Landgrave  of  Hesse-Cassel 
(1785-1830),  368  ;  makes  peace  (1795), 
395  n.  ;  becomes  Elector,  463,  475  ; 
ambiguous  conduct  in  1806,  504  ;  de¬ 
posed,  51 1 ;  restored,  631 ;  acquisitions 
in  1815,  656,  662  n. 

William  V  of  Holland,  168,  325,  372  ; 
receives  Nassau,  463  ;  deposed  (1806), 
511 

William  of  Lippe-Schaumburg,  371 
Winterfeldt,  Hans  (Prussian  general), 
199,  205,  207 ;  defeated  and  killed 
(1757),  218 

Winzingerode,  Ferdinand,  Baron  von 
(Russian  general),  spring  campaign 
of  1813,  580-588;  autumn  campaign, 
597-633  ;  in  1814,  639 
Wittelsbach,  family  of,  genealogy,  707  ; 
cf.  Bavaria,  Palatinate,  Neuburg, 
Zweibrticken ;  minor  branches  of,  51- 

52,  364-365 

Wittgenstein,  Prince  Louis  (Russian 
general),  572 ;  spring  campaign  of 
1813,  580-1588  ;  autumn,  602-633 
Wolffradt,  Baron,  556 
Woronzov,  Count  Michael  (Russian 
minister),  203  ;  Chancellor,  228 

Count  Simon  (Russian  minister), 
takes  office  (1802),  459 
Wrede,  Prince  Charles  von  (Bavarian 
general),  595,  597  n.  ;  favours  join¬ 
ing  Allies  (1813),  618;  intercepts 
Napoleon’s  retreat,  633  ;  in  campaign 
of  1814,  636-642,  esp.  638 
Wurmser,  Dagobert  (Austrian  Marshal), 
campaign  of  1793,  386-387;  of  1795, 
400  ;  in  Italy  (1796),  407 
Wiirtemberg,  Duchy  of,  49-50 ;  policy 
of,  in  1 741  >  I22>  1 54»  167;  assists 

Maria  Theresa,  203 ;  contingent  at 
Leuthen,  2^4-226,  cf.  250;  in  1759, 
271,  292  ;  history  of,  in  18th  century, 
371  ;  comes  to  terms  with  France 


732  GERMANY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


( 1 795)>  395  ;  in  1796,  404;  connection 
with  Russia,  458  ;  gains  and  losses  in 
1802,  460,  462,  469,  483 ;  becomes 
Kingdom,  494  ;  497  ;  assists  Napoleon 
(1809),  529-544;  development  of, 

550—55 1  ;  sends  contingent  to  Grand 
Army  (1812),  568;  of  1813,  596  n., 
616,  628  ;  assists  Allies  (1814),  636, 
638  ;  views  of,  at  Congress  of  Vienna, 
649-650;  attitude  in  1815,  662,  699, 
700  ;  part  of  Germanic  Confederation, 

651 

Cf.  Eberhard  Louis  (1677-1733); 
Charles  Alexander  ( 1 733~ 1 737)  ? 
Charles  Eugene  (1 737-1793); 
Louis  Eugene  (1793-1795);  Fred¬ 
erick  Eugene  ( 1 795— 1 797) ;  Fred¬ 
erick  11  (and  1)  (1797-1816) 
Wurzburg,  Bishopric  of,  48 ;  annexed 
by  Bavaria,  461  ;  made  an  Electorate 
for  Ferdinand  of  Salzburg,  494 ;  joins 
Confederation  of  Rhine,  511,  552; 
contingent  of,  in  1813,  596  n.  ;  assists 
Allies  (1814),  636 
Wiisterhausen,  Treaty  of  (1726),  81 

Xavier  of  Saxony,  Regent  for  Frederick 
Augustus  III,  365 

Yorck  von  Wartenburg,  Count  (Prussian 
general),  concludes  Convention  of 
Tauroggen,  572  ;  spring  campaign  of 
1813,  581-588,  593  ;  autumn  campaign 
of  1813,  597-633  (esp.  Katzbach, 
Leipzig)  ;  in  campaign  of  1814, 
636-642 


York,  Frederick,  Duke  of,  386,  437 

Zach  (Austrian  officer),  444 
Zahna,  battle  of  (1813),  615 
Zastrow,  General  (Prussian  minister), 
511?  5l8 

Ziethen,  Count  Hans  Joachim  (Prussian 
general),  in  Austrian  Succession  War, 
129,  157,  16 1  ;  in  Seven  Years’  War, 
.20 7,  225-226,  235,  278 
Ziethen,  Count  Hans  Ernest  von 
(Prussian  general),  in  1815,  Chapter 
XXXV.  passim ,  esp.,  668-689  ;  move 
on  Waterloo,  686-687  ;  at  Waterloo, 
694 

Zinzendorf,  Carl  von  (Austrian  minister), 
.337-339. 

Zips  occupied  by  Austria  (1768),  305 
Znaym,  armistice  of  (1809),  543 
Zondaderi,  Cardinal,  Papal  Nuntio  in 
Netherlands,  340 

Zorndorf,  battle  of  (1758),  239-241 
Zurich,  first  battle  of  (May  1799),  432  ; 

second  (September  1799),  436 
Zweibrucken,  subdivisions  of,  52 ;  an¬ 
nexed  to  France,  460;  cf.  genealogy, 
7°7 . 

Birkenfeld,  Charles  11  ( 1 775—1 795)> 
claim  on  Bavaria,  31 1,  319,  321, 
362,  364  ;  707 

Christian  iv,  Duke  of,  commands 
Imperial  Army  ( 1 758), 236 ;  (1759), 
261  ;  707 

Maximilian  Joseph  of,  succeeds  to 
Bavaria  and  Palatinate  (1799), 
364  ;  cf.  Maximilian  Joseph 


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